


The Pillar upon Which England Rests

by DiscordantWords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: But he doesn't know it yet, Canon Compliant, Drinking, Drug Use, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Grieving John, Implied/Referenced Suicide, John Loves Sherlock, M/M, Memories, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Canon, Pre-Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Recreational Drug Use, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-03 22:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5309249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have all saved him, at one time or another, in different ways, these people Sherlock Holmes has come to call friends. But she was the first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rated mature to be on the safe side for drug use, strip clubs and drug cartels. Canon-typical violence, no explicit sexual content.

*

When she gets the call, when they first tell her that Sherlock has gone and thrown himself off a building, her first thought is: _doesn't seem like the sort of thing he would do, really._

Her second thought, breaking over her in a wave of considerable dismay, is: _oh, that's exactly the sort of thing he would go and do, the poor silly sod._

He'd always been the worst sort of lonely, she thinks. The kind where you didn't realize you were actually lonely at all. 

She permits herself a good cry, then, because even though he had a mother of his own (and a very nice one, at that, albeit clearly not one for teaching proper manners), she has always treated him as a son. Has, for all the time she's been his landlady (and not his housekeeper, there _is_ a difference, no matter what he'd seemed to believe), and even in the time before that, those hazy Florida days best left to distant memory. 

She cries it out, knowing it won't be the last time, certainly the thought of that dear, _strange_ boy will be causing her to choke up for some time now. But she cries, and then she gets herself under control and busies herself putting together a plate of little sandwiches for John, who hasn't returned home yet but will, almost certainly, be inconsolable when he does so, and in no shape for taking care of himself.

*

"You were good for him," she tells John, later, hugging him awkwardly as he sits, bereft, in his chair. He looks like he wants to curl in on himself, the poor dear, his face gone all white, his hands shaking. He keeps on starting to cry, screwing up his face as the grief hits him, and then fighting it all back, swallowing it down again. It looks painful. 

"Grief is always worst for the surviving partner," she tells him soothingly, petting at the top of his head. "Thinking about what you could have done differently." 

His voice is grief-choked and hoarse, but she can still hear the confusion in his inflection, plain as day, when he responds, "I'm—not—" he hesitates, and then plows on. "But your husband was executed. Sherlock said you—that he helped to get your husband executed." 

"And rightfully so," she agrees. "But that doesn't mean I don't still miss him, sometimes." 

John doesn't seem to know what to say to that, so she keeps on petting his hair and letting him almost cry. He stares and stares and stares at Sherlock's empty chair, as though he can bring him back through sheer force of will. 

"I'll make you some tea," she tells him, finally, patting him on the arm and stepping back. "You have yourself a good cry. It might make you feel better." 

She leaves the flat but stands by the door for a moment, waiting. There is only silence.

*

Sherlock's brother sends a car to pick her and John up for the funeral. It gets John's back up, she can see it right away, and while she doesn't pretend to know what went on between them, it's pretty clear that John holds Mycroft culpable in some way for what happened. 

But he looks outside at the rain and the photographers mobbed by the doorway, and he gives in with a resigned little sigh. 

They don't speak on the drive. From the way his jaw is clenched and his breath is coming hard through his nose, she doesn't think he'd be able, even if he had something he wanted to say. 

The service is crowded.

She can see the way this surprises John, the hesitation in his steps. He had been a polarizing personality, Sherlock, and he'd been absolutely _destroyed_ in the press, but he had also helped a lot of people. A _lot_ of people. And they all seemed to want to thank him, even if he wasn't around anymore to hear it. 

There were others, too, curiosity seekers and photographers and even a small group of protesters yelling nasty things through the cemetery gates. But it's the people he helped that take center stage, and she hopes John sees that. 

Sherlock's parents are not there. 

Unusual, she thinks, but, then, they might still be angry at him for—well, for doing what he did. It's the kind of thing that hurts those left behind. And people react in all sorts of ways when they're hurting. Her own parents never spoke to her again after she went and married Frank, after all, and that wasn't nearly as devastating. Or permanent, as it turned out. 

She and John ride back to Baker Street in silence. He looks out into the rain and she watches him watching the sky. 

*

She thinks he will likely need a little extra support, after, and so she makes up a pot of tea and a tray of biscuits and picks her way carefully up the stairs. He is sitting in his chair again, his head in his hands. He lifts his head in acknowledgement when she comes into the room, and his face is just the picture of such abject misery she thinks her heart might break right there and then. 

The poor dear, she thinks. He's not like Sherlock, who had been stunningly perceptive and yet oddly obtuse. He knows what he had. He knows _exactly_ what he's lost. 

"I'll just—" she says, lifting the tray slightly and moving to set it down on the table. And the table—the table is still strewn with lab equipment and clutter, pieces of Sherlock all over the place. It's no wonder John can't seem to catch his breath, what with reminders everywhere he looks. 

It'll have to be boxed up.

When she looks back at him, he has stood up, gone to the mantel and is staring hard at the skull, as if the mysteries of the universe have been etched into the bone. 

"You were a far more appropriate choice of companion," she says, trying for light. She walks over to where he's standing, reaches out and picks up the skull. The bone is smooth in her hands, cool to the touch. "He had such a fascination with this silly thing until he found himself a proper friend. I used to take it away from him when he was being unreasonable. Worst sort of punishment, really. He'd be on his best behavior until he got it back." 

John is looking at her as though she is speaking another language. Who knows, maybe she is. The language of Sherlock is not always easily deciphered, although she thinks they've got on pretty well through the years. 

"I think he liked having someone to talk to," she tells him, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. She wants to sit down but it doesn't feel right, somehow, sitting in his chair. She goes over and settles herself onto the sofa instead, skull in her lap like an odd little pet. 

He is still standing by the mantel, looking lost and confused and so _sad_ that she doesn't quite know what to say. So she just keeps on talking. 

"Did he ever tell you about how we met? I don't mean just the circumstances, with Frank and the—" she flaps her hand in the air in a pantomime. "Lethal injection. But the whole story?" 

John raises a dubious eyebrow. 

"No," she says, "I don't suppose he would have, would he?" He wasn't sentimental that way. In other ways, private ways, yes. But he would have seen no purpose in exchanging anecdotes. 

John goes back to his chair, sits, keeps on staring at her as though she'd grown an extra appendage at some point over the course of their conversation. 

"You weren't a client?" He asks finally, the sound of his own voice seeming to surprise him a little bit. But he is looking at her and not at that wretched empty chair, so she counts that as a win. 

"Oh, of course I was," she says. "But not at first." 

How to begin? She can still see him, so painfully young, pale in the Florida sun, with a beet red stripe of sunburn across the bridge of his nose. Frank had favored Hawaiian print shirts, had just about insisted on them for anyone who worked for him in any capacity, and hadn't Sherlock just looked _thunderous_ in those garish prints? She wishes, not for the first time, that she had a photograph. But that's the thing about living. You don't always know which moments are the significant ones until they're long gone. 

"The dates are a bit muddled for me," she says, thinking back. "It was before that whole business with the murders. Sherlock must have been—oh—eighteen? Nineteen? He was on break from university." 

"Sorry," John says, shaking his head. "Sorry. Wait. Are you telling me that Sherlock put your husband away for murder when he was eighteen years old?" 

"No!" she laughs, shakes her head fondly. "No, of course not! Frank got _himself_ put away for double murder. He didn't need any help with that. He was a bit of an idiot, if I'm speaking honestly—and at my age I think I've earned the right. Handsome, though," she sighed. "His only saving grace, really. But no, Frank went and got himself arrested, and sentenced, and Sherlock ensured that he received the lethal injection. That happened later. Maybe a year or so before you boys moved in." 

John hisses out a breath and shakes his head again. "Mrs Hudson, I'm—I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm quite. I'm not really at the fond reminiscence stage, yet." His voice cracks on the last, and he turns his head, looking away from her, making a show of studying the bookshelves but really just hiding his face. 

She studies him for a moment, then gets to her feet, places the skull gently on the coffee table. 

"I'll be back in a jiffy." 

*

She gives him a bit of time, comes back upstairs with a bottle of good scotch and two carefully rolled joints. He is still sitting in his chair, still with that lost thousand-yard stare, but he seems a bit calmer. He gives her a bemused look when she places a glass on the table next to him and hands him the joint. 

"Just this once," she tells him. "They're for my hip, you know." 

"Mrs. Hudson," he says, and the fact that he even makes an effort to sound scandalized (however unsuccessful the end result may be) is heartening. "I don't—" He shakes his head, huffs a small laugh, places the little cigarette carefully on the table and picks up the drink instead. "Cheers." 

She sips her drink and waits for a moment to see if he'll object before she lights a match and touches the joint to her lips, the pleasant smell of marijuana rising up. He looks over at her with a vaguely amused expression but does not chastise. 

"I've seen some interesting things in my time, John," she tells him. "I was a dancer when I was young, did you know that? Exotic." 

He frowns, scrunches up his face a little bit. "I—I can't think of any reason for me to need to know that." 

"Yes, well, I was. And I was quite good, too, if the money was any indication," she winks, relieved when he rolls his eyes. She wonders if he's aware that he's picked up some of Sherlock's mannerisms. She wonders if he was ever aware that Sherlock had picked up some of his. 

"Of course, after Frank and I got married, I gave all that up. He needed someone to do his accounting, and I always had a bit of a talent for numbers. Came in handy." She sighs and takes another sip of her drink. "We had some fun times, you know, before I realized what was really going on. I was a bit naïve, if you'd believe that. But even after I knew what he was really up to, we had a few good years. He had a sense of humor, my Frank. A temper, too, of course, but—" 

"Mrs Hudson," John interrupts. He looks terribly uncomfortable, there in his chair. 

"I'm getting off track," she says. "Sorry, dear. The point is, Frank always had an endless parade of lost souls working for him. They would come and go. His type of business tends to attract transients. There were all sorts, really." 

John opens his mouth to interrupt and she shakes her head, holding up one finger to silence him. 

"Oh, humor me a bit, John. It was the accent, you know. I was terribly homesick, even if I wouldn't admit it at the time. And there he was one day, poor lost lamb, just as polite as can be." 

"Sherlock," John says, disbelieving. "Polite." 

"Oh, he was acting, of course. You know how he likes to put on airs." 

"Liked," John corrects, his voice low.

The smile slips from her face, and she looks down at her hands. "Yes," she says, and all of a sudden she wants to cry again, thinking of that skinny lost boy in his Hawaiian shirt with his glassy eyes and sharp tongue; thinking of the man he grew into, all outward sharp angles and hidden softness, sweeping about the place in that great big coat of his. "Yes, well he was much the same back then. Different, in some ways. But all of the pieces were there, even if he hadn't quite figured out where to put them yet." 

*

She hadn't taken much notice of him, at first. He was just another pallid youth with a nervous disposition, twitchy in bright sunlight, too far from home. 

She never did find out exactly what he was doing there that summer, sweating in the Miami heat, although years later she'd finally met his brother in person and thought she might have figured out what he was running from. It was, perhaps, easier to evade the long arm of Mycroft Holmes when one was on an entirely different continent. 

He'd had that scrawny, underfed look that junkies tended to get, and he kept his eyes downcast, spoke in low tones, all "yes sir" and "no sir" whenever Frank spoke to him, and it had taken her the better part of a week to realize that there was something deeper going on behind that polite, dull facade. 

"Mary Lou," Frank had said to her one afternoon, and she'd looked up from her little desk with the coffee-stained table top, in her dingy little back office where she kept the books for the club (and managed all of Frank's _other_ finances as well). He'd had one burly arm wrapped around the neck of a skinny kid who didn't even look old enough to buy himself a beer. 

She'd seen him a few times, hadn't paid him much mind. He'd seemed a quiet, polite boy. The sun was clearly not agreeing with him, painting a miserable red flush across his cheeks and nose. 

"Sherlock here is going to help you with the books." 

"Oh," she'd said, slightly alarmed. "I don't—"

"You've been complaining for the past six months that you need another pair of hands here," Frank groused. "Here's an extra pair of hands. So shut up about it." 

She had nothing against anyone who worked for her husband, really, but she wasn't particularly keen on letting some unknown kid, strung out on god-knows-what, barge in and throw her carefully ordered system into disarray. She did need help, she _had_ asked for help, but she'd meant a proper employee, not—not—

"Had him making drops for me, but he keeps scaring off my customers," Frank said, tightening his arm a little bit. He was grinning, but it was the grin she didn't like, the Aren't-We-Having-A-Good-Time grin that usually predicated some bit of unpleasantness. 

The kid twitched but did not struggle, although he had to be growing uncomfortable. The weight of Frank's arm on his shoulder was keeping him off balance, she could see him straining to remain still, to avoid tipping over. 

"Then Stevie tells me he's some kind of freak with numbers," Frank continues. "Can do that shit in his head, or something. See if we've got some use for him, otherwise—" he cut a wide grin at the kid, "The gators will be eating well tonight." 

He squeezed the kid—Sherlock's—neck one last time before dropping his hand and stalking off down the hall. The muffled bass throb of music briefly swelled as he opened the metal door leading back onto the floor, then faded again as it slammed behind him. 

The back of Sherlock's neck was all red. For a moment she thought it was from Frank, yanking on him the way that you would scruff a disobedient puppy, but upon closer inspection it was another angry red band of sunburn. Frank squeezing on his neck like that must have _hurt_. 

"It was a joke," she offered, trying for reassuring. The kid was still staring at the floor, looking half paralyzed with fear. "He wouldn't really do that, with the gators. He just likes to sound tough. I think he heard it in a movie somewhere." 

"That's not your name," he'd said, lifting his eyes. 

She'd had two thoughts, then, thoughts she can recall clear as crystal to this day. The first was that his eyes were startlingly pale, and more _aware_ than she'd expected, a keenness that belied his quiet, shuffling demeanor. The second was that his voice was, possibly, the nicest thing she'd ever heard. 

"Oh," she'd said, with a pang in her chest she'd not been expecting. "Oh, you're English." 

"And you're clearly homesick," he'd said dryly, shedding his hunched and humble mannerism like a second skin. He stretched, seem to gain an extra inch or two in height just in adjusted posture, pushed his hair back so it no longer hung limply in his face. "And, just as clearly, not keen on being called 'Mary Lou.'" 

Frank had insisted on Mary Lou as a stage name, all those years ago, arguing that no one wanted to pay a dancer named Martha Louise, and she'd really had to agree with him on that. It was a nice name, but old-fashioned, not likely to inspire lustful thoughts. She hadn't danced for ages, even the _thought_ of dancing made her very bones ache (and in the intervening years she'd gone from dancer to the owner's wife to resident manager-cum-house-mother for the other girls to bookkeeper with her own office), but the name had stuck. 

"How on earth did you—" 

"You wince when he says your name. An unconscious gesture, you're probably not even aware that you do it. I'd say that it was caused by your distaste for the speaker rather than the designation, except I've seen the two of you interact on at least eight separate occasions over the past week, and you only make that particular expression when he addresses you directly by name."

She looked up at him wonderingly, as he leaned against the desk and patted his pockets. 

"Have you any cigarettes? I seem to have misplaced—" 

She reached into her desk drawer and withdrew a pack, tossing it to him. He caught it with an easy grace. 

"Don't put things in your pockets if you mean to keep them," she said. "Not around here. Too many sticky fingers." 

He lit the cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke, still studying her with those odd pale eyes. "Mary Lou," he drew the name out, mulling it over, sounding almost bored. "Not made up wholesale. I almost think you'd prefer it if he'd given you an entirely different name. Shortened, then. A nickname. Why shorten a name in an establishment like this? Perhaps the original name was viewed as somehow unappealing. Old-fashioned, even. Margaret—no! Martha." He narrowed his eyes, took another pull on the cigarette. "Martha _Louise._ Not many dancers going by that handle, even if you are some years removed from the stage." 

"With brains big enough to work all of that out, surely you've managed to learn that it's not polite to make allusions to a lady's age," she said crossly, but she'd followed it up with a smile. A little unspoken truce. 

He'd looked startled by her response, his bored indifference slipping into something slightly unsure. He seemed strange and incongruous, standing there in her little office with the dirty carpet, this young man with his posh English accent and keen eyes. He was wearing a particularly ugly purple Hawaiian shirt pattered with turquoise and yellow parrots, and it made his angry, sunburnt skin stand out in sharp relief. 

"You're rather far from home, Sherlock." 

"I could say the same about you, _Martha,_ " he stretched her name out lazily. 

"Deliberate insolence doesn't suit you," she said. "I tolerate it from boys who don't know any better, but you've already demonstrated that you've got more brains than the lot of them out there." She could see him watching her warily, and she softened her tone a bit. "Why don't we try that again?" 

He'd hesitated, she could see him teetering on the edge of some decision or another. When he reached a conclusion she could see it settle over the whole of him, his shoulders squaring slightly. He stuck out his hand, all proper English schoolboy charm. "Mrs Hudson," he said. "Pleased to meet you. The name's Sherlock Holmes." 

*

It took him twenty minutes to balance the books she'd been struggling over for the better part of a week. He'd waved her off every time she tried to take over, brusque and dismissive, and she supposed it ought to have hurt her feelings, but there was no _meanness_ in him. He just went off into his head, and all of that external input, the thump of the bass from the lethargic afternoon DJ, the squeak of the aging ceiling fan overhead, the ring of the telephone down the hall, her own chatter—all of it was tantamount to a bothersome fly, buzzing about his ears and distracting him from his work. 

"I'll be back, dear," she'd said, and he hadn't looked up. It was as if he hadn't heard her at all. 

She'd gone down the hallway into the little break room, rummaged in the noisy old refrigerator for some cold cuts and put together a sandwich. She brought it back to him with a sweating can of cola. 

"You look half starved, dear," she'd said. 

He'd waved a hand dismissively without looking up. "Never mind that. Do you realize that there's nearly half a million dollars missing in your 1999 ledger?" 

"That's—" she shook her head. "There can't be money missing, Sherlock. All of this—" she'd gestured to the piles of ledgers, all filled with her neat and cramped handwriting. "Is for _adding_ money. Making it look like profits from some of Frank's other dealings came in through the club." 

He'd lifted his head and stared at her with a little furrow between his brows. "Are people actually fooled by that?" 

"No one's ever questioned—" 

"There are four customers here right now. Even if your dancers are working only for tips, there's still wages paid to your DJ, bartender, security staff, not to mention the overhead costs such as electricity, water, rent—" 

"There are four customers here right now because it's twelve-thirty in the afternoon, young man. And I'll dare you to find me a sorrier sight than a strip club at twelve-thirty in the afternoon." 

"That would depend very much on your definition of a sorry sight." 

She huffed at him. "We draw quite a crowd in the evenings." 

"There are six similar establishments within a five mile radius. All of which average twenty to fifty more patrons per evening than this one." 

"And you know that for sure, do you?" she'd asked, again picking up the sandwich and urging it in his direction. 

He accepted the soda instead and took two quick swallows. "Hard to extrapolate year-round business, of course, I _have_ only been here a week." He flashed her a quick, humorless smile. "Although customer volume would suggest—" 

"Have you just been visiting strip clubs and counting customers?" She cut in. It occurred to her that he might be the strangest person she'd ever met, and her line of work had brought her into contact with a disproportionate number of questionable and unusual characters over the years. 

"Yes, of course," he'd said. "Your husband, Frank—" he clicked the "k", straightening up in his chair, "was attempting to determine whether the local market might bear the introduction of a new product. Not a bad idea. Have to admire that entrepreneurial spirit. But considering the unavoidable fact that this establishment is on the decline, and the fact that he is already funneling a significant cut of the profits into other pursuits before they even reach your office—lovely bookkeeping, by the way, _very_ neat handwriting, although you might want to leave off the vodka, your attention to detail really drops off with each tip, and that old 'it's five o'clock somewhere' excuse doesn't really fly anymore in this day and age, does it?—I would have to advise against taking on any new, erm, 'creative' business ventures." 

He'd smiled at her, a charming, broad, _false_ smile, and took a large bite of the sandwich. 

"In addition," he said, voice muffled as he chewed and swallowed. "Security detail at—" He held up his hands, made air quotes with his fingers. "—The Flashy Flamingo and Stiletto Sally's are becoming rather adept at picking out who in a crowd might be in your husband's employ. Seems they're each either trying their hand at being a respectable place of business—you know, no substances that aren't strictly legal— or they're looking to carve out their own piece of the pie. So to speak. In any case, your husband's insistence that everyone in his employ wear these _wretched_ shirts doesn't exactly work in favor of anonymity." 

She shook her head, watched as the rest of the sandwich disappeared into his mouth. He didn't seem quite aware that he'd eaten it. 

"I'm not going to ask you how you knew about the drinking—which, mind you, is only in the evenings, and even then, only _some_ evenings. And I'll agree with you about the shirts, although I'll ask that you not share that with Frank." She studied his face. He was watching her raptly, as if not certain what to make of her. "But I don't see how you can possibly come to the conclusion that there is anything missing, Sherlock. The entire purpose here is to try to find places to put all of the _extra_ money." 

He'd rolled his eyes and huffed out the most impatient sigh she'd ever heard come out of a human being, leaned over in his chair far enough that she thought he might topple out of it in a tangle of limbs, and grabbed up a stack of ledgers. 

"The overall profit has declined at a slow but extremely steady rate from 1996 through 1999. Prior to that, your figures held true. Now, you could chalk that up to bad business, but the receipts don't show any significant fluctuation in club attendance over that time period. And your husband's—outside ventures—have expanded, since then, wouldn't you say?" 

"Yes, but there _have_ been other expenses. Rent has gone up, and these DJs now think they can get away with murder. The money they want! You wouldn't believe it." 

"Even accounting for elevated expenses, you're looking at nearly half a million dollars in 1999," Sherlock said. "That better be some DJ." 

She'd sat back in her chair, feeling flustered and upset and half-panicked. Because she'd been meticulous, and she'd recorded everything, but apparently she hadn't seen something going on right under her nose. And perhaps it was a silly thing to be upset over when she was spending her days up to her neck in illegal accounting and her husband had worked his way up from occasionally procuring illegal substances to contracting with chemists and a whole host of other terrifying people to manufacture the stuff, and keeping up his steady rotating staff of lost boys to work as distributors—yes, hell, maybe she _was_ silly for expecting any kind of honesty at all in her situation, but. She was his _wife._ She had a right to know. 

Sherlock seemed a bit flustered by the stream of words that had poured out of his mouth, and he perched on the edge of his chair, tensed, looking ready to run off. She looked at him, really looked at him, and saw how big his pupils were, blackness swamping the pale grey of his eyes. 

"Oh," she'd said, any lingering irritation banished by a swell of concern. Sadness, too, the way she was always sad when she saw the wreckage that became of most of the young people who got caught up in Frank's orbit. But this sadness was a bit keener, settling in her ribcage as if it meant to stay a while. Perhaps because his voice reminded her of home, or perhaps because he seemed so _bright_ , but the thought of him shuffling off to become just another anonymous soul was profoundly upsetting. 

She'd stood up and touched his forehead. He swatted at her halfheartedly. His hands were trembling. 

"I'm fine," he said. 

She gestured to the creaky old sofa against the wall. She'd spent her share of nights on it, nights when Frank was in his cups or busy doing god-knows-what with the dancers, and she had come to find the scratchy material comforting. Even the one busted spring that always seemed to dig into her back was something of a dear friend. "Can you make it to the couch?" 

He sprang out of the chair to his feet. "I'm good. No need for—" 

His knees cut out from under him and he dropped like a sack of grain, just missing cracking his forehead on the edge of her desk. 

She crouched next to him. "You're a bit of a scrawny thing, but I don't have it in me to carry you." 

"Arthritis," he mumbled, his face pressed against the filthy beige carpet. "You favor your left hip very slightly when you walk. You probably don't even know you're doing it." 

"Yes, well, isn't that wonderful," she'd groused. "Can you sit up? _Slowly?_ "

He rolled over onto his back, lurched to a half-sitting position. "Sometimes I think better lying down." 

"And here I was convinced that you just wanted to get acquainted with the carpeting. Now stand up and lean on my shoulder, _not too hard_ , mind you, and let's get you over to that sofa." 

He stumbled to his feet and she carefully helped him over to the couch. He collapsed onto it face-down, the springs groaning in protest. 

He mumbled something into the cushion that might have been "I'm fine" or "I found a dime." 

"Sleep it off," she'd told him, switching off the light and shutting the door behind him. The rest of the ledgers could wait.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is shaping up to be a good deal longer than I expected when I first began, so I've increased the chapter count to 3. I hope to have the conclusion posted before the end of the year.

*

"I came back in the evening," she tells John, adjusting herself on the sofa so she has a pillow behind her back. "And he was gone. I thought that was the end of it—we'd never see him again, but…" 

She trails, off, realizing that perhaps she has chosen her words poorly. John has leaned his head back against his chair, shut his eyes. His face is doing that complicated contortion again, the one that seems to be barricading itself against a siege of unbearable emotions. 

"But he's always been full of surprises, hasn't he?"

He looks up at her, and there is a flash of something in his eyes, something that looks a lot like hope, fleeting and viciously quashed. 

"Yeah," John says finally. "Always." 

*

She'd fluffed the cushions and re-folded the aged blanket on the back of the sofa. There was still work to be done with the ledgers, but the secrets contained within had left her feeling a bit raw. She was in no hurry to go back to them. 

Instead, she'd left her office and gone down the hall towards the dressing rooms. As she approached the door, she heard a variety of female voices (ordinary), and one deep male voice (decidedly _not_ ordinary). 

Oh, absolutely not. 

Any fleeting affection she'd felt for the odd young man was banished immediately, and she pushed her way into the dressing room ready to give him a piece of her mind. 

"Sherlock, whatever privileges you believe you have been afforded by being taken into my husband's employ, I can assure you that they do not extend to harassing my dancers," she'd snapped, drawing herself up stiffly as she moved around a clothing bar hung with a variety of skimpy costumes and finally found herself face-to-face with the scoundrel in question. 

She'd paused, then, because whatever she'd been expecting—oh, who was she to try and fool herself, she'd _known_ what she was expecting, she'd seen Frank in here often enough with his looming and leering and _touching—_ was not what she discovered. 

Sherlock was leaning on one of the dressing tables, and he had attracted a small crowd of dancers in various states of dress and undress. But he was not groping, or teasing, or joking. His eyes were fixed somewhere above shoulder height, not looking at anyone in particular, and he was… talking. His voice was at once rapid-fire and yet somehow bored, and only the stiffness in his shoulders belied the fact that he wasn't entirely at ease. 

"—fourth one from the left, in the grey suit. Blue shirt, open collar. He's got an expensive bottle of champagne on the table, ordered it as soon as he came in. Knows it'll attract attention, give off the air that he has money to spend." 

"So, him?" Cyndi (whose real name was Christine and who tended to favor crimped hair and on Thursday nights got customers fired up with a playful stage routine set to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun") asked, swaying forward as though hanging on every single one of Sherlock's words. 

He shrugged, see-sawed his hand in the air, still determinedly not looking at any of the girls right in front of him. "Not as such. His suit is expensive, but not new. There's fraying around the cuffs. He's hoping no one will notice in the dim light. Watch is a knock-off Rolex, doesn't even keep correct time. The key fob on his ring is for a BMW, but if you look closely the actual key to his automobile is for a Toyota. The logo on the fob catches the eye—no one notices the small details. He's giving off the illusion of wealth because he enjoys the attention. He wants you to compete for him—" he says this with a faint sneer, lip curling up. "Pay him extra attention, all in the hope of being the one to win his favor for a private dance, the chance for a big tip. He'll pay for the dance, of course, he's no desire to run afoul of the extremely large and extremely intimidating bouncer at the front door, but he won't tip. He won't even particularly care one way or another about the dance. He'll have already gotten what he wanted out of the exchange—which is the sight of several girls all trying at once to simultaneously win his affection and one-up the others." 

"That prick," Cyndi breathed. The other girls around her nodded.

He tilted his head, scanned their faces, focused in on Cinnamon, waifish but unmissable with her vivid red hair. His eyes never once dropped below her face. 

"You. You should be paying attention to the man alone at the back corner table. Young, nervous. Unfortunate complexion. His eyes haven't left you from the moment he noticed you." 

Cinnamon squared her shoulders, tossed her hair. She was _daring_ him to look. "Why?" 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "He's here because he turns into a fumbling mess when speaking to a woman out there in the 'real world'—" he made exaggerated air quotes, "—so he's trying out a fantasy. Poor self-esteem along with an inflated sense of self-worth, odd combination, not likely to turn out well for him." Sherlock's eyes lit up as he came to a conclusion, and he said smugly, "he wants to play the hero." 

"So what?"

"He thinks he has the moral high ground of everyone in this building. He's wearing a black button-down shirt with brown shoes. This is not someone accustomed to making an effort. He's wearing that because it's his _best_ shirt, and those are his _best_ shoes, no regard for the whole picture. He's nervous. Wants to make a good impression. He stood up earlier to wave down a waitress. Did you see the strain on his back pocket? His wallet is overstuffed, nearly bursting at the seams. His pocket is straining, not stretched, he's not in the habit of carrying a wallet that full. Someone went to the bank before popping in for a bit of fun. He wanted to be prepared." 

Cinnamon was smiling at him as he finished speaking. "All right. Thanks for the tip." 

"Wait," he said, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. He was nervous, clearly, but doing an admirable job of hiding it. "Don't just—" he waved his arm helplessly. "With all of that. You'll send him running for the door. Approach softly, pretend to be a little shy, a little down on your luck. Feed into the tired 'what's a girl like you doing in a place like this' routine. Tell him you're only here because you're earning money for school." 

"I'm not in school—" 

"Your real hair color is brown and your name is obviously not _Cinnamon_ ," he snapped. "I fail to see your point." 

He sat down on one of the little dressing table stools in a bit of a huff, then seemed to realize that put him at eye-level with the naked breasts of a number of women. He started to flail to his feet. 

Cinnamon, smirking, had stepped forward, put a hand on his chest to stop him from moving. She slid forward, sat herself firmly in his lap. 

A couple of girls behind her let out teasing little catcalls. 

Looking pleased with herself, Cinnamon reached out and placed her finger against Sherlock's lips while the other slid down his side. He'd gone very, very still. 

"What—" 

Cinnamon reached around and gave his arse a little grope.

Upon realizing that Sherlock was not, in fact, harassing the dancers, and that he had gone from looking incredibly self-assured to incredibly uncomfortable in about three seconds flat, she'd stepped forward and scolded "Oh, Cinnamon, enough!" 

Cinnamon had smiled, stood up slowly, kissed him on the cheek. "I was just teasing." 

She made a big show of looking around the room, counting the faces there, schooled her face into an expression of motherly sternness. "Is anyone at all out working the floor?"

There was grumbling, mostly good-natured, and the girls began to disperse. 

She glanced down at Sherlock, who was still sitting on the stool, frowning. His eyes were unfocused. 

"There are only two men allowed in this dressing room," she told him. After a long moment, he blinked, turned his head to meet her eyes. "Frank, for obvious reasons, and Stevie, who works the door. He protects them, every night, and they trust him." 

"Ah," he said, and stood up. 

"You were enjoying that," she said. 

"Hm?" He glanced sharply at her.

"Being the center of attention." 

"Demonstrating how to exploit pathetic displays of human weakness for one's own gain, you mean? As a matter of fact, I was. Shame you interrupted, I had at least three other—what's the term? _Marks_ identified." 

His hand strayed to his pocket. He frowned. 

"Oh," she said in a flood of exasperation, whirling towards the door. "Cinnamon." 

Cinnamon was halfway into the hall. She turned back, looking sheepish. 

They stared at each other for a moment. 

"I was just playing with him," Cinnamon said. "I was going to give it back."

She held out her hand. Cinnamon sighed and walked back across the room, her heels clacking. She slapped a wallet down into Martha's upturned palm. 

"Don't keep things in your pockets," she reminded Sherlock sternly.

Sherlock blinked. "You—" 

"I wasn't going to keep it," Cinnamon said in a sullen voice. "I was just having fun. I'm not allowed to do it out there. Bad for business." 

"You took that. Out of my pocket." Sherlock seemed utterly flabbergasted. 

"I distracted you." 

"No. You—that's—I would have noticed. I notice everything. You're saying that I didn't notice you _pickpocketing_ me?" He practically spit the word. He stood up, paced in a small circle near the dressing tables. 

"I'm good at it." Cinnamon laughed. "You don't have to look so offended. I didn't take anything. You can check." 

He stopped pacing, pinned her with a stare. "Show me how you did that." 

*

"Of course," she says to John. "He claimed he was already quite adept at pickpocketing. That he just wanted to compare techniques. But, between you and me, I think he was fibbing. He spent the rest of the week practicing on everyone. Got to be a bit annoying, to tell the truth of it." 

John let out a little disbelieving huff of laughter. "I'm—not to cast doubt on your storytelling abilities, Mrs Hudson, but I'm having a hard time imagining this." 

"Oh he was terribly uncomfortable around all of _that_ ," she says, giggling a little. "And then when he started _thinking_ , all of it went away and he was much the same as he is—as he—as you knew him." She sighs, looks down at her hands. "I was terribly protective of those girls, John. I don't know if you can possibly understand. Some of them I liked more than others, you know, some were sweet girls and some were downright horrid, absolute terrors to be around. But I cared about them all. I saw myself in them, in all of them, a little bit. I couldn't stop Frank from getting handsy when he wanted to, it was his club and lord knows he liked to remind everyone who was in charge. But no one else got near those girls unless they wanted him there. So I don't say it lightly when I tell you that I trusted Sherlock with them."

"Yeah," John says. "I know. He—" 

"There was an innocence to him," she says, still looking down at her hands. "And if he were here right now he'd scoff at me, because I knew him for four weeks that summer and he was high as a kite almost every single day, and neck deep in the kind of drug running that sends you off to prison for a very long time if they catch you at it." She sighs again. "And he'd tell you that the only reason he ever did half of the good things he did was because he enjoyed the puzzle of it. And maybe that was just something he said, or maybe that really was how he saw himself—it's hard to say for certain, isn't it? There was just no telling _what_ went on in that silly head of his. But I trusted him." 

She looks up and frowns, because John has his eyes closed, and his face is contorting as if he's in terrible pain. She can hear him struggling to keep his breathing calm, and she wishes he would just let go, just let the tears come, because he's going to make himself sick, fighting with his own heart this way. 

"Oh," she says, her distress mounting. She stands up and goes over to his chair, needing to fuss over him in some way. She has been sitting on the sofa for more than an hour, keeping vigil with him, and yet he still looks so terribly alone. She pets at his shoulder, makes vague soothing sounds, hopes and hopes and _hopes_ that something will do it, that something will tip him over the edge and let him properly grieve instead of this—this insistence on stoicism. 

"He made me watch," John says through gritted teeth, his breath rasping out through his nose. "He spoke to me, and he threw his phone down, and he made me watch him do it." He opens his eyes, looks up at her then, and although his eyes are dry his face is pleading. "How am I supposed to—how am I ever going to get that out of my head?" 

"I would tell you that time heals all wounds," she tells him gently. "But I don't know that that's true." 

She thinks of Sherlock, as he'd been all those years and years ago, his eyes sparkling with mirth, and then those same eyes, unfocused and adrift. The thought of him breaks her heart, and she suddenly wonders why she ever began telling John this story to begin with. 

"It's not just that he died," John says, rubbing the back of his hand hard against his mouth. "It's the—his head, you know? On the pavement? All of that noise he always made about his great big bloody brain and that 'everything else is just transport' rubbish and he—he just—he just went and—" He takes another one of those gulping, shuddering breaths. "He didn't just _die._ He cracked his head right open. Deliberately. And that doesn't make sense, it—it doesn't—" 

He stands abruptly, his hands clenching at his sides. 

She touches his arm gently, steps back. "I think I'm doing more harm than good, here. I only wanted—I didn't intend—" 

"No," he says, shaking his head. "No it's—it's good. Hearing about him, from you. Helps to know that I'm not the only one who—"

She knows. The fervor of interest that sprang up around Sherlock in the days leading up to and following his death has only slightly abated. People still gather outside to shout the most horrible abuse when she or John dare to venture past the front door. She's left the curtains drawn, kept the windows locked up tight because she knows that tonight, after the funeral, is likely to be a time of peak interest. 

"Well," she says, moving into the kitchen to refresh their drinks. "As I said, I only knew him for a few weeks. But he did make things interesting." 

*

It had not surprised her, following the scene in the dressing room, to discover that Sherlock had talked his way into Frank's lab. 

It was supposed to be a big secret, his lab. Even the fact that he _had_ a lab. 

He had started out honestly enough, Frank, a strip club proprietor with delusions of grandeur. Then he'd realized that he could squeeze a bit more money out of his customers by providing access to certain substances. He'd positioned himself as a middleman, buying cheap in bulk and reselling at a premium. 

The money had stopped trickling in, and had begun pouring in. 

But he'd hated it, had always hated it, dealing with the cartels. Tense negotiations, unexpected price increases cutting into his profits, complaints just as likely to be met with gunfire as with negotiation. So he'd begun parading in a sorry line of would-be chemists, dabbling in a bit of this, a bit of that, hoping to get to the point where he could provide his own supply. 

In retrospect, she supposed she should have been upset over her husband's desire to start his own cartel, rather than pleased by his entrepreneurial spirit. 

Well, live and learn. 

In any case, Frank had a lab where his latest collection of miscreants were attempting to—well, to make magic happen, she could only guess. Because, as far as she knew, nothing approaching useful had ever come out of his experiments. So he kept on dealing with all of his terrible contacts, taking bigger and bigger risks on imports—cocaine, heroin—because he could get it cheaper if he bought in bulk, and he could get it _really_ cheap if the bulk he was buying was so large as to be unreasonable. Meth was easier, plenty of local sources for meth in Miami. But the cocaine, the heroin, that came in on boats, and required a good deal of skulking around near shipping containers on dark docks in the dead of night. 

They were all sworn to secrecy about the lab. If the cartels knew he was trying to make his own (even if his attempts thus far had been laughably pathetic), they would not be merciful. She had been shielded from the worst of the world her husband inhabited, but not so much as to be entirely naïve about the consequences for certain transgressions. 

In the end, it was his own stupidity that did him in, not the cartels. (She wishes she could have known that, then. It would have saved her a lot of hand-wringing.)

But Sherlock—he figured it out, almost immediately, that Frank was doing more than just moving product. And just as quickly he'd talked himself out of his job dealing (frankly, he was rubbish at it, anyway, almost never able to close a sale without opening his mouth and getting himself punched for his efforts), and into Frank's top-secret, loyal-personnel-only operating base. 

She'd found him in her office one evening, pupils as big as saucers, perched on her sofa and scribbling wildly in a notebook. 

He'd jerked in surprise at the sight of her, leaping up off of the couch, and then starting to pace around the room, running his hands through his hair and speaking in a rapid-fire voice. 

"Three years, he's been trying this, and it never occurred to any of them to—it's idiocy, complete and utter idiocy—it's amazing that they've even managed to master _walking_ , one foot in front of the other, let alone—"

"Sherlock," she'd said, because the sight of him, all disheveled and worked up, was a bit alarming.

"You've married an idiot," he told her. "And while it's true that most people are idiots, I feel that this is a special case."

"I've often felt the same," she'd said, soothingly, sitting down on the couch and patting the seat next to her. He'd come back over like a skittish animal, sitting down and drawing his legs up underneath him. 

"You are aware that he means to synthesize his own product and cut the cartels out of the equation entirely?" 

"I try to stay out of the operational side of things, dear. Not my area." 

He'd given her a flat look, so full of contempt that she'd nearly recoiled from it. 

"Oh, of course I'm aware," she'd snapped, finally. "But I'm not involved." 

"If he keeps on the way he has been, he's going to get someone killed. Preferably himself." 

"Sherlock!" she'd said, sharply, because as fond as she'd grown of the boy over the last week or so, it was still her _husband_ he was talking about. 

"Apologies," he'd said, tossing it out absently, as if manners were something he could pull out and deploy at will. "In the last three hours, I've been able to accomplish what your husband's 'experts' have failed to do in three years." He'd flipped open his notebook and thrust it at her, she'd been able to glimpse hastily scribbled formulas before he'd snatched it back. 

"That's nice," she'd said. "How much have you taken? And _what_ , exactly, have you taken? Can I get you a glass of water?" 

"This?" he'd waved his hand at himself dismissively. "Just a test." 

"Oh," she'd said, horrified. "You haven't been—with his—? That's not _safe,_ Sherlock, those people he's been working with haven't been able to come up with anything fit for human consumption—" 

"That's what I've been _saying!_ " he'd roared, full of frustrated venom, and then he was up again, pacing, pacing, pacing. Then he'd stopped, smiled. "I'll admit this is an unexpected bonus. I hadn't given much thought to synthesizing my own, due to lack of access to the necessary raw materials. More trouble than it's worth, really. But this—" 

"Cocaine," she'd decided, looking him up and down. He was positively _flying._

"Good for brainwork," he'd said. "I've a few more adjustments to make, but with just a few minor changes—" 

She'd patted him on the shoulder and gone off to fetch him some water. When she came back, he was still pacing and yammering on as if she'd never left. 

He took the water from her, drank it as he spun around, muttering, in her tiny office, an oddly hypnotic dance. He was in the middle of reciting some sort of complicated chemical equation when his eyes had flitted past her face.

"Oh," he'd said, stopping suddenly and fixing his attention on her. "The ledgers. Your husband has a mistress—former, most likely, not current—and a child. He's been funneling some of the profits to her, counting on you not noticing the discrepancy—quite correctly—up until now." 

She'd sucked in a sharp breath of air, because of all the things she'd expected him to blurt out, that had—well that hadn't been one of them. 

"He's done a rubbish job of keeping his secret," Sherlock said. "He has contact information written in his address book. Amber Jones." 

"That could be anyone," she'd protested, halfhearted, because she knew. She _knew._

"The paper is darkened slightly in the corner on that page. Likely due to the presence of oils on the fingertip. He turns to that page _a lot._ The ink on her name was written in blue ball point ink, but it's smudged. He runs his thumb over it, likely an unconscious motion, when he's thinking about her." He walked over to the filing cabinets against the wall, rapped on one of the drawers with his knuckles. "Employment records. Amber Jones—likely not her real name, but we'll give her the benefit of the doubt—worked here until resigning for 'personal reasons' two years ago. The discrepancies in your ledgers begin the following month. The 'personal reasons' were almost certainly pregnancy. Your husband, likely feeling guilty but unable to publicly acknowledge her, has been providing for her in secret ever since." 

She'd shut her eyes, focused on her breathing. A lot of girls came through the club. She treated them all well, loved them all in her way, but over time many of the names and faces began to blur together. Amber Jones. She thought that perhaps she could remember—

"Considering the sum of money involved, I would say—" 

"Stop talking, please," she'd said, feeling lightheaded. 

He'd stopped, had stood there frozen in the middle of the room, his hands still half-extended mid-gesture. His expression slid slowly from a sort of manic smugness into uncertainty. After a moment, he'd looked down at his hands and lowered them to his sides, slipping them into his pockets. He'd looked, suddenly, so terribly young. 

"That's not a nice thing to spring on someone," she told him. 

"Certainly you weren't under the impression that Frank was diverting funds for a _good_ reason? Although, I'll admit a mistress is rather pedestrian. I was expecting—" 

"I asked you to stop talking." 

He'd fallen silent again. The wildness of the coke seemed to leave him. His pulse jumped in his throat. 

"Please go away," she said. 

He'd hesitated, and then was gone without another word, vanished through the door. She didn't have it in her, at the moment, to worry after him. She sat there on her dear, lumpy little couch, and had herself a good cry. 

An hour later, she'd gone to the restroom, washed her face, dried her eyes, and gotten back to work. 

*

"I didn't see him for two days after that," she tells John. She has never told anyone this, but she tells John because John will understand, because he, more than anyone else, _knew_ Sherlock.

His thoughts had just come so rapid-fire, had tumbled out of his mouth before it ever could have even occurred to him to keep some things to himself. He'd gone on, flinging sharp words, unintentionally wounding people along the way, and had gone and gotten himself quite _intentionally_ hurt in response most of the time. 

John had been _good_ for him. She could see it, all the times that Sherlock started to do or say something horrible, the way he'd begun to hesitate, to look to John for confirmation or approval before continuing. It wasn't all the time, of course, there was no one capable of fully wrangling that mind of his into submission, not when he was running full-speed ahead, but it was often enough. He'd started to lean on John, a little bit. And it had been good. For both of them. 

And now—

"I began to suspect that he was sleeping in my office, when I wasn't there," she says, cutting off her own train of thought before the tears can come again. "The throw pillows were often in disarray when I arrived in the morning. I'd never asked him where he was staying, poor thing, so far from home. I imagine he thought he was being sneaky, creeping out at the crack of dawn." She smiles fondly. "I expect he might have gone on avoiding me entirely had it not been for the stabbing." 

*

She had seen her fair share of bar fights, loud posturing and bloodied knuckles. Generally, drunken altercations were loud, showy, accompanied by incoherent shouting and broken glass. If anyone were to be stabbed (and she had seen that, too, in her time), it was generally after a good deal of flailing about with a blade or a broken bottle. 

This particular stabbing, however, had been conducted with no fanfare whatsoever. No yelling, no swearing. Just a quiet corpse, curled discretely behind the dumpster in the back, fragrant in the morning heat. 

One of the girls, sneaking back by the bins to smoke a cigarette before the start of her shift, had been the one to find him. Her resultant shriek brought everyone in the vicinity at a run. 

Sherlock had been amongst the immediate responders—likely roused from his hiding place in her office by all the shouting. She'd arrived shortly after, with Frank, half-panicked at the thought of a police investigation stirring up things that were best left undisturbed. 

There was a bit of a crowd around the dumpster—a few of the day shift girls and waitresses, the bartender, the day bouncer—but no authorities yet, for which she was grateful. She saw Frank talking to some of his boys, likely sending them off to ensure that everything was in order. Then he'd gone inside to call the police himself, from his office phone. 

Sherlock had studiously avoided eye contact, standing there right at the front of the crowd, peering down at the corpse with such intense, wide-eyed interest that he could have been mistaken for a boy on Christmas morning. A rather gruesome Christmas morning, but a joyful one nonetheless. 

The corpse was wearing one of the hideous Hawaiian shirts that Frank so favored.

"Unless he's new," he said, speaking to no one in particular, "he's not one of Frank's employees." 

" _You're_ new, dear," she said, gently shouldering through the small crowd of onlookers to stand next to him. "You couldn't possibly know everyone." 

He looked up at her, his features schooled in haughty contempt, as if to say _of_ course _I know everyone._ Only his eyes betrayed him, sliding nervously away from her. He was uncertain of his reception following his verbal outburst the other night. 

"You're right, of course, though," she told him gently. "I've no idea who this is." 

"He's dressed this way on purpose," he said after a moment, eyes flicking up and finally meeting hers. She thought she saw a glimmer of relief on his face. "It's a message." 

"You're not the only ones who wear Hawaiian shirts, you know," one of the girls said. "This _is_ Miami. He wouldn't be the first person to get himself stabbed in a parking lot after a wild night." 

"He wasn't wearing this shirt when he was killed," Sherlock murmured, looking down at the body with avid interest. His lips kept wanting to twitch up into a smile—the effect was rather disconcerting. 

He reached out—with his ungloved hand—and she slapped it away before he could touch the corpse. 

"The police will be here any moment," she said. "And they won't buy 'curiosity' as an excuse for why your hands are covered in that man's blood. Particularly when they get a look at your pupils." 

He frowned, but folded his hands primly in front of him. "There's no tear in his shirt. And look at the blood—there's not nearly enough of it. He was stabbed elsewhere, dressed, and then brought here. Quite deliberately." 

He stood up, straightened his own Hawaiian shirt, the bright pattern an unfortunate contrast against his pale skin. It made him look sallow, unhealthy. 

"If I'm not mistaken, your husband has gotten himself mixed up in a turf war. And the first shot has just been fired." 

"A turf war with who?" 

He'd beamed at her, a full-wattage smile. "I have no idea." 

There were sirens, now, growing closer. The crowd around the corpse started to break up. 

"If I could just—" he looked back towards the corpse.

"Go," she told him firmly, then said it again louder to the crowd at large. "Anyone here who's currently on something stronger than caffeine, go. I don't want to clean up any more messes than I have to." 

*

"Was it?" John asks. 

"Hm?" She is pulled from her memories and is almost surprised to find herself there, amidst the comfortable clutter at Baker Street. Her glass is empty yet again. 

"A… turf war?" 

"Oh, yes. Sort of," she says, and smiles, goes to pour herself another drink. She would not, normally, imbibe past this point—she is already loose-limbed and warm, but the pain of the day is still there, edging up just below the surface, and she'd like to keep it at bay for just a bit longer, enjoy these moments of nostalgic companionship without succumbing completely to melancholia. 

There will be time enough for that. 

"He spent a month in Miami, all told. Four weeks. The first was spent getting into Frank's good graces—I never did find out how he came to be in my husband's employ, but I suspect it was a matter of right place and right time. Or, well, wrong place and wrong time, I suppose, depending on how you look at it." She giggles a little bit, takes another healthy sip. "He'd been helping me with my bookkeeping for a little over a week when the stabbing happened, and he spent the next two weeks almost entirely wrapped up in what happened next." 

John leans back in his chair, takes a sip of his drink. He seems content to keep listening. 

"It was a mess, John, you've no idea. He sorted it out almost entirely on his own. I don't even dare imagine what might have happened if he hadn't been there." She finishes her drink and sets the empty glass down on the coffee table. "Most nights he was off to this club or that, changing clothes and personalities and accents—well, you know how he was. He'd come creeping back in the daytime and spend an hour sitting on the back of my couch, just talking at me while I worked. I don't know if he ever really noticed if I was there or not. He certainly didn't _stop_ talking if I had to leave the room or take a call." 

John lets out a harsh little noise that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. He puts his fist up against his lips, breathes through his nose. 

"Frank was worried that one of the cartels, one of the _big_ cartels, had found out about his side research, that he was planning on breaking away and supplying his own business. At the time it seemed a legitimate concern, but—well, in retrospect, I suspect if they'd had any idea what he was doing, we'd have all been killed. None of this bother with coded messages and warnings." She shakes her head, frowns. "Sherlock thought it was far more likely that someone new was looking to edge into Frank's territory, was sending him a message telling him to step aside or else." 

She stands up again, suddenly too restless to continue sitting. She walks over to the window, peers cautiously past the curtain. There are people there, on the sidewalk. Waiting, watching, cameras at the ready. All too eager to snap a shot of John looking all gray and grim and sad. 

She tsks unhappily, pulls back, lets the curtain fall. 

"Still out there, then?" John asks. He does not stir from his chair. 

"Vultures," she confirms. "They'll get bored of it, in time." 

"I've half a mind to go chase them off myself." 

"Oh, don't," she murmurs in distress. She can see it, John half-drunk and half-mad with grief as he is, out there in the street throwing punches, flashbulbs going off in his face. The headlines alone would be the end of him. She can only imagine the kinds of salacious things that would be said. Things not even fit to print. 

"Don't worry, Mrs Hudson, I've had quite enough of the press," he tells her, his voice wry and bitterly unhappy. He makes no move to get up. 

"Well," she says, and her hip twinges so she goes back to the couch in spite of her restlessness. "A few days into the case, and he has a better motive than the police could come up with. Another week and a half on top of that for research and he comes up with a suspect." 

*

"Christopher Juarez," Sherlock said abruptly, after more than an hour of silence. 

She nearly startled right out of her chair. He'd been perched on the back of the couch like an enormous bird in an ugly patterned shirt for so long that she'd thought he'd fallen asleep. 

Instead, he leapt to his feet, smiling, looking very much awake. She did her usual instinctive check of him, noted the sweat on his brow and his dilated pupils (honestly, she was not sure what she'd expected; she'd done the same check upon his arrival, and he clearly hadn't yet begun to come down.) 

She was used to turning a blind eye to these kinds of things, had been doing so for _years_ , and she could not quite put a finger on why it bothered her so much with him. 

"Sorry, dear?" she asked him mildly, refraining from commenting on his state. 

"Almost certainly the person behind the threat towards your husband. He thinks he's being _clever._ " The wondering, slightly revolted tone of his voice left little room for interpretation on exactly how clever he found Mr Juarez's scheme. 

"And how did you figure that out?"

After all, the corpse had been taken away by Miami PD, processed, identified, and dismissed as having any kind of connection to Frank Hudson's club. Other than the obvious, of course, having had the terrible misfortune of being stabbed in the back parking lot. 

"All true," Sherlock said, of the police department's findings. "Except he wasn't stabbed in the parking lot, as you already know. He _was,_ however, a fairly frequent customer of this fine establishment, a fact confirmed by your security videos. Better dresser in life than in death, unfortunately, didn't look like the sort of chap to be caught dead in a Hawaiian shirt." He smiled at that, as though both surprised and pleased at his own wit. 

He leapt back up onto the couch, tucked his knees under his chin in one fluid motion, peered at her. 

"Christopher Juarez is the manager over at The Flashy Flamingo," he rolled his eyes as he pronounced the name. "Not the owner, mind you, who seems like the type of person for whom the designation 'dumb as a box of rocks' was invented for. They've been having customers who seem to be connected to your husband in any way escorted off premises for weeks now. The owner thinks it's because he's running a clean business, doesn't want any dirty drug dealers underfoot—" he lifted his head, smiled a bit. "—and the manager clearly knows better. He's not pushing us out because they want to keep things clean. He's pushing us out because he wants a larger piece of the pie." 

He stood up again, bounced a little on the balls of his feet, seeming for all the world to have more energy rushing through his veins than could be contained in his limbs. 

"Frank had someone there that night," he breathed, eyes going wide with realization. He spun in a small circle, stopped, steadied himself against the wall. "He sent someone inside in spite of the increased pressure. Maybe he wanted to push back. In any case, Juarez took exception." 

"But he didn't harm anyone of Frank's," she said. "We would have heard about it by now. Frank would be on the warpath." 

"No," Sherlock shook his head. "No, no, of course not. He wanted to send a message, not start an all-out war. He took one of your customers, one of your _loyal_ customers, did him in and dressed him to look the part. 'Stay out,' he's saying, or your employees are next." 

She had the phone in her hand and was in the midst of dialing Frank's number when Sherlock snatched up the receiver, quickly hung up. 

"What are you doing?" she'd snapped. "We have to tell him. He can't send anyone else in there." 

"Yield, to that kind of pressure?" Sherlock rolled his eyes. "You'll have everyone in a twenty mile radius thinking they can start up their own cartel." 

"I'll not have anyone risking their safety so that Frank can sell more _drugs,_ " she'd said indignantly. 

Sherlock raised his eyebrow. 

"I'll not have anyone risking their safety more than they already do," she'd amended. "Which, in spite of my objections, they seem to find reasonable." 

"Of course not, Mrs Hudson," he'd said, grinning. "I wouldn't expect you to. That's why I'll be going in." 

"You can't—"

"Already have it all sorted," he said. "I'll be bringing in a test run of my new formula. Preliminary responses are quite favorable, you know." 

"It's cocaine," she sighed. "It predisposes one to _favorable_ thoughts." 

"I know. Delightful, isn't it?" He winked, then whirled around and practically skipped out the door. 

*

She'd found herself sick with worry over him. 

"I think I'm gonna promote that weird little genius of yours," Frank had said, upon finding her pacing, pacing, pacing in their cavernous and well-appointed kitchen. 

"What?" She'd glanced up, startled, worried that he somehow knew about Sherlock's plan. 

"Sorry. You'll be on your own for the books again," he'd chuckled, either oblivious to or completely misreading her look of alarm. "The kid can't sell to save his life, but the stuff he whipped up in the lab yesterday—" he whistled, shaking his head slowly. "Mary Lou, this— _this_ is what we've been waiting for, all this time. We're finally gonna be able to break away, start bringing in some real money without having our profits cut at every turn." 

She could see it, laid out so clearly. Sherlock, skinny and brilliant and young and so very very _lost_ , getting exactly what he wanted—free rein inside Frank's lab. Getting high to make his brain work faster so that he could chase even better ways of getting high. That light, that mischievous, _innocent_ spark in him dimming, flickering, guttering, dying. 

"Oh," she'd said, given Frank a smile. It felt false, stiff on her face. Her very teeth ached. "That's wonderful. I'm sure he'll be very happy." 

She'd patted her husband on the arm, and then walked off to their bedroom, with its giant master bathroom and walk-in closet. She'd surveyed her wall of clothes with a critical eye, selected an outfit. 

"Going shopping," she called breezily to Frank as she slipped out the door. He was in the other room. Their television was blaring. If he responded, she didn't hear him. 

She'd slipped behind the wheel of her car, adjusted her hair, and drove straight to The Flashy Flamingo. 

*

There was more pink neon that was strictly decent, she thought. 

The club had taken the flamingo theme and had not just run with it, they had run it straight into the ground. It was tacky and loud and overly bright and she felt her very skin crawl with revulsion as she'd strode straight up to the door, past a line of waiting patrons. 

The bouncer eyed her suspiciously. 

She was wearing a Hawaiian print dress, gaudy, unmistakable. She flashed the bouncer her best smile. She was getting up in years, but that smile had been a formidable weapon, back in the day. 

"I'm here for a bit of business with Mr Juarez," she said. 

The bouncer had smiled at her, a cold smile, and had stepped aside to let her enter. She could see him murmuring into his walkie talkie, but could not make out what he was saying over the din of the music. 

Never mind that, she told herself. She had a good enough idea of what he was saying. And to whom. 

All of the indoor lights were pink. There were scantily clad cocktail waitresses in pink skirts, serving up drinks on pink trays. A dancer cavorted on stage under pink neon, a crowd of rowdy men cheering her on. 

She kept her eyes straight ahead, only peripherally noticing her surroundings. She'd seen it all before, and with better lighting. 

"Mary Lou?" a waitress appeared in front of her, giving a tight smile. "Mr Juarez has asked that I escort you to his office." 

"Mrs Hudson, please," she demurred. 

The tight smile slid off of the girl's face, and she turned to lead the way through a side door. 

The music was mercifully muffled as they entered a back corridor. She'd followed the waitress all the way down the hall, stood with her arms crossed as the girl pushed open the door at the end, gestured for her to enter. 

Sherlock was already there, wearing yet another brightly patterned shirt. He was sitting in a high-backed chair, staring across the desk at a man in a white linen suit—Christopher Juarez, she assumed. 

"Ah, Mrs Hudson," Juarez smiled. "Welcome." 

Sherlock did not even glance over at her. 

"We've been having an interesting conversation," Juarez said, inclining his head towards Sherlock. "I'll admit that I admire his bravery, walking in here the way that he did. Dressed in _that._ After—well." 

"My brother often says that bravery is another word for stupidity," Sherlock said in a flat voice, his eyes still fixed on Juarez. 

"Your brother is a wise man." 

"Well. He certainly thinks so."

"I can't really think of any other reason for you to come here," Juarez said, leaning back in his chair and cracking his knuckles. He reached out and adjusted one of the framed photos on his desk, a study in careful, measured movements. "Besides stupidity." 

"Yes, well, rumors of your own mental acuity have been greatly exaggerated, it would appear." 

"You're a mouthy little freak, aren't you?" Juarez stood up, his friendly smile gone. 

Sherlock also stood up, unfolding out of the chair in a graceful motion. "So I've been told." 

"So your _not stupid_ reason for coming here would be…?" 

"I asked him to," she piped up, hands clenched nervously into fists.

Juarez glanced over at her, surprised. 

"We received your message," she said. "Loud and clear. Except—and please don't take this as a criticism—the next time you try something like that, please make sure to leave a calling card. There are a lot of people in this town who don't like my husband, Mr Juarez. I'd asked for Sherlock's assistance in tracking down the source." 

"Yes," Sherlock said, still looking hard at Juarez. "Except your motivations aren't quite as simple as I'd first thought, are they?" 

Juarez blinked. 

"No," Sherlock said. "They're not. You're not just looking to edge in on Frank Hudson's market, this is _personal._ You believe he's wronged you in some way, and you want to make sure he suffers for it. First you attack his side business. Then his customers, then his staff. You don't want him to cede territory to you, you want to _ruin_ him." 

Juarez shrugged, but it was a stiff motion, forced-casual. "It's business. Don't go looking for things that aren't there." 

"Wouldn't dream of it," Sherlock's focus had gone laser sharp. "Only there _is_ something there. Something you haven't done a very good job of hiding." 

"What—"

Sherlock inclined his head towards the desk. "Photos. Lots of them. Wife, children. You consider yourself a family man, albeit with a bit of a vain streak. You're in every single one of these shots." He shrugged, smirked. "Doesn't mean much, by itself. But it does provide an interesting comparison." 

He reached out, plucked one of the frames off the desk.

"All of these photos are recent. Within the last six months, I'd say, as evidenced by your hairstyle and clothing. All except for this one." 

Juarez snatched at the frame in Sherlock's hand, but he jerked it away.

"This one is older. By a few years, I'd say. Significant changes to your hair color, face and waistline—none for the better, I'm afraid. And the man in the photo with you—tan, Hawaiian shirt—clear family resemblance. A brother."

Juarez had frozen, was staring at Sherlock with a dumbfounded expression. 

"Now, someone as vain as you, who swaps out his photos every six months, would not want something lying around to draw such an unfavorable comparison. The only explanation for hanging on to and displaying this particular photograph is that the person in the picture with you—your brother—is no longer available to pose for a replacement shot. If it were simply a matter of distance, you likely wouldn't display the photo at all. But it's not just distance, is it? You have this photo on your desk because your brother is dead. Died not long after the photograph was taken, I suspect, while in Frank Hudson's employ. You blame him." 

Juarez had gone red in the face. "You—that's—you can't know that—someone must have told—"

"I merely observed," Sherlock said quietly. 

"You—"

"Bit much, really, getting involved in an industry you have no real interest in, all to trigger some sort of turf war that would, presumably, end in his ruination and death. Would have been easier to just shoot him, burn his club down." 

"Sherlock—" she'd interjected, horrified.

"Oh, shut up," he sighed. "He won't have the chance now. Obviously." 

"Frank Hudson," Juarez said, his voice trembling now, all of the color drained out of his face. "Is a monster. My brother was a _good man._ He was—he—" he whirled on Mrs Hudson, lip curling in a snarl. "Your husband _hooked_ him. He had a weakness for certain drugs, and your husband fed him and fed him and fed him and kept him crawling back for more." 

She squared her shoulders. "My husband sold a product. Perhaps not a legal one, but the choice was always there." 

"No." Juarez shook his head. " _No._ Your husband hired my brother to _sell_ his product. Except he kept him supplied with extras. A little incentive to keep working. Only those incentives had a price tag, and the price tag kept going _up._ He would have had to work for your husband for nothing for years to pay off that debt. All those little baggies delivered with a smile." 

"Next time, plan your revenge a bit more thoroughly," Sherlock said, sounding bored. 

Juarez let out an incoherent shriek of rage, launching himself forward onto Sherlock. 

She watched in horror, certain that Sherlock was about to be pummeled into oblivion. Instead, he twisted his slim frame out of the way, grabbing Juarez by the lapels of his jacket, whirling him so that he was pressed up against the wall with an elbow to his throat. 

"We'll be leaving now," he said, pressing harder. Juarez wheezed for breath. "I'd advise that you let us walk out of here without doing anything else stupid." 

He released Juarez, who slid to the ground, clutching his throat. "He was my brother," he gasped.

"And he's dead," Sherlock said. "You're not. Yet." 

He picked up the framed photo off of the ground, tossed it in Juarez's direction. Then he turned towards the door, opened it, turned towards her with a half-smile. 

"After you."

*

They walked together through the humid Florida night, towards her car.

Behind them, sirens began to wail. 

"Had one of your dancers phone the police from a pay phone at a prearranged time," he said. "Offered up an extremely helpful tip about a strip club being used as a front for a drug smuggling operation. I've done my research—was even able to provide the location where the drugs are stashed. Helped to expedite the process." He smiled. "The bag of cocaine Juarez now has tucked in his jacket pocket is just the icing on the cake." 

She laughed a little bit, looking up at him.

"Good advice, not keeping things in one's pockets. Pity no one shared it with him." He favored her with a small smile, barely a quirk of the lips. 

"Dreadful about his brother," she said, feeling some of the elation drop off. 

Sherlock shrugged. "Juarez made his own choices. In any case, be sure to keep things running cleanly at the club for a while. I'm certain he'll be pointing fingers. But your books are balanced nicely, and so long as no one does anything exceptionally idiotic, you should be in the clear." 

"A brain like that," she marveled quietly. "Why aren't you at school?" 

"I'm on holiday," he said cheerfully. 

"Not a typical sort of holiday, this." 

"I was led to believe that a trip to a sunny location to ingest illegal substances and engage in sordid behavior was _exactly_ the sort of holiday expected of someone my age." 

"Well," she'd sighed. "When you put it like _that_ …"

Except it hadn't been like that. Not for him. She could see it plain as day—he was nothing like the university students that flooded the beach towns for extended periods of fully-funded debauchery. 

"No," she'd said suddenly, the mirth all gone out of her voice, and he'd looked up at her with a startled expression. "No, it's not—you aren't like them. You're not quite like anyone I've ever met. And to brush this off, to just _dismiss_ it as some kind of, I don't know, _rite of passage_ does you a terrible disservice." 

He'd opened his mouth, shut it again. 

"You're not _like_ everyone else, Sherlock," she'd said, taking hold of both of his forearms. "And you know it. You can't just mock the ordinary one day and play at it the next." 

He'd stepped back, still looking at her as if she'd slapped him. "You're presuming to lecture me? A former exotic dancer, married to a mediocre drug lord who fancies himself some kind of criminal kingpin?" 

"Yes," she'd said, lifting her chin. 

He'd blinked back at her. 

"You should be on a plane, Sherlock, going back to Oxford or Cambridge or wherever it is that you're studying—"

"Cambridge," he said quietly. 

"—and not finding reasons to stay here. You know what's here for you, Sherlock? Death." She took a deep breath, plowed on. "Maybe not right away. But eventually—if it's not the drugs, Sherlock, it'll be the boredom. I've known you for a month, and I can already see it, the way the banality of all this gets under your skin, drives you mad. This life, this future—it's not for you. _Go home._ " 

She wanted to say more, but was suddenly unsure if she could. Her breath was coming fast. She was thinking about Juarez, about the look on his face when he talked about his brother. Thinking about all of those people that drifted in and out of Frank's orbit over the years, about all of the unsuspecting souls still to come. Tricked. Roped in. Hooked. Stripped of their own free will by their own addictions. Exploited. Frank, there at the center of it all. 

"Go home," she said again, her voice rough.

He turned without a word and walked off into the night, leaving her standing alone next to her car. She had one last glimpse of him, his slim shoulders slouched in that hideously patterned shirt, and then he was gone into the crowds. 

*

Their house was overlarge, opulent, with white leather couches and closed circuit security cameras in every room. She'd always felt like a guest there, even after more than a decade of calling it home. The lumpy couch in her small office was closer to her heart. 

Frank was out back by the pool, stretched out on a lounge chair. The sun had baked his skin a deep brown. Wiry whorls of graying hair covered his chest. 

She'd marched up to him before she could lose her nerve, and he'd heard her heels clicking on the flagstone, had lifted his head. Cucumber slices had dropped from both of his eyes onto the ground, one of many efforts at chasing eternal youth. 

"Mary Lou," he'd said, looking amused. "You look angry." 

"I am angry," she agreed. She wanted to slap him. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her. 

"What did I do this time?" His lip was twitching up into a smile. 

"Tell me about Amber Jones." 

He'd sat still, staring her down for a long moment. Then he sighed, gave her a sheepish grin. "Well, you got me on that one. Was it the money that gave it away?" 

She'd nodded, embarrassed as all get out, but holding her ground nonetheless. 

"It was a one-time mistake," he'd said. "You know I have a weakness for a pretty face. You _know_ I do. But I always come home to you." 

She'd nodded again, because this was true. She had known it, had always looked the other way. And he _had_ always come home. 

"I was just trying to do the right thing," he'd attempted, giving her that sheepish smile again, followed by a helpless little shrug. He sat up, reached for her hand. She'd jerked hers out of reach. 

"Oh now," he'd said, looking hurt. "Would you rather they be out on the street? I've been trying to atone for my mistakes." 

"Those boys that you have out running around town selling for you," she said, steeling herself. "Tell me you're not paying them in product." 

"Now where did you hear a thing like that?" Frank asked, darkly, all of his sheepish Who-Me? guise dropped. 

"Tell me the truth," she said, pursing her lips in a tight line. 

"They like what I have," Frank said mildly. "They like it, and I give it to them at a discounted rate. They have to work off the balance, sell for me. If they keep on taking, they keep on working." 

She'd looked at him, aghast. "That's—" 

"What's the problem? This way everyone's happy." 

There had been the slow and inevitable onrush of horror, a feeling that left her hot and cold all at once, her skin prickling. She had loved Frank, once. Still did, in her way. He had been funny and handsome and had fit right in with her idea of a grand adventure, all those years ago. She'd had a wild streak a mile wide, had run off to America on a whim with her best friend, the two of them had chased away London fog with Florida sunshine. 

She and Margaret had both been lookers, back then. They'd had no trouble finding work, and it had been a bit of a thrill, dancing, knowing how shocked, how utterly appalled her parents would be if they'd known. They'd taken rooms together and the money had rolled in, all in cash. 

And Frank had been smirking and funny and so very handsome, and he'd paid her such special attention all the time. It had been so nice. She had wanted it to go on forever. 

He'd taken her out for a proper dinner one night, proposed with a little diamond ring that had sparkled prettily on her finger. But how Margaret had raged at her when she'd found out! It had been so shocking, to realize that her friend had always viewed their setup as temporary, as a wild adventure to have and then close up and set firmly in the past. 

And it had taken her years, _years_ , to come to terms with it, but she thought that maybe Margaret had been right to look at things that way, to see her marriage to Frank as a trap rather than an escape. 

She'd always been a bit naïve. 

So this was it, she'd realized. This was where the line had been drawn in her flawed and muddled sense of morality. She hadn't minded the questionable company, she'd turned a blind eye to his dalliances with the girls (she wasn't young anymore, and he'd always had an appreciation for the female form), she'd tolerated the drugs and the increasing worry and scrutiny that had begun to press inward. But this—getting his hooks into poor young souls who had no defenses against him and his friendly Aren't-We-Having-A-Good-Time smile, hooking them and stranding them and then giving them a shovel—not to dig their way out but to dig their own graves. 

She turned, walked away from him. She wanted to wrench the ring off of her finger and throw it in the pool, but resisted the dramatic gesture. It would take time to extricate herself. She had made so many mistakes, but she would do this right.

"Mary Lou!" He called after her. "MARY LOU!" 

She kept her shoulders squared and kept on walking. 

*

She was crying a little bit when she reached the club, waved Stevie off when he approached her in concern. She went down the back hall to her little office, flipped on the light.

She stifled a shout. Sherlock was draped across the couch on his back, his head lolling over the arm rest. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. 

"Ah," he'd said, voice slow. He did not lift his head. "Mrs Hudson. Wasn't expecting you back tonight." 

"I know you sleep on the couch," she'd said crossly. "You think you're being clever, leaving through the window. I've always known." 

"Mm," he nodded. "Good." 

She wanted to shout at him, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and ask what the hell he thought he was doing to himself. Because she hated seeing him impaired like this, slow and sluggish and dull. The cocaine had been bad enough, with his rapid-fire speech and stuttering pulse, his wild eyes and thoughts that skipped from one subject to another without pause. But this—this was something else entirely, and it was _hateful._

"What is this, then?" she'd asked. 

"Hm?"

"Don't play stupid, Sherlock, it doesn't suit you." 

"Nooo," he agreed, drawing out the word. 

"You told me you took drugs because they helped you to think," she said, sitting down on the edge of the couch and putting a firm finger on his chin, tilting his head so he was forced to look at her. 

"Yup," he popped the "p," then let out a surprised little giggle at the sound. 

"And are you doing much thinking like this?" she snapped, aware that her heart was still pounding and her blood was still singing from the confrontation with Frank, aware that she'd like nothing more than to take out all of that bottled anger and unleash it on someone, anyone. She forced herself calm. Steady breaths, steady breaths. 

"Nope," another popped "p," another giggle. 

She stood up, walked away before she did or said anything else in anger. She went down the hall into the break room, got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, stood for a moment just gripping the door. 

Sherlock was exactly where she'd left him when she returned to her office. 

"Hello," he slurred out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes shut. 

"Sit up and drink this," she told him. 

He opened his eyes, blinked muzzily at her, then rolled over and sat up with a miserable little groan. "Why am I sitting up?" 

"You're drinking water." 

"Oh," he said, and blinked at the water bottle in his hand. He took a small sip, then another, longer one. 

"Do I need to take you to the hospital?" 

He furrowed his brow. "Whatever for?" Then he cocked his head, smiled. "Hospital. To the hospital. It's funny, isn't it? It's the same language but the words…" his voice trailed off and his head listed back against the couch. "The words… the words are all in different places." 

"Sherlock," she barked, and he opened his eyes again. He was beginning to frighten her. 

"It's fine," he said. "I just wanted to try it on." 

"Try what on?" 

"Being a normal person. Is this what it's like? Everything is so slow and… nice." 

She sighed, her anger dissipating. To be so young, with a head like that. All of those big thoughts, all of the time, never any peace. 

"You'll be horrified that you ever even had that thought, tomorrow," she told him. 

"Mm, probably." He'd smiled at her, a lazy, hazy grin that spread slowly across his face. His eyelids were drooping. He didn't protest, didn't fuss, didn't so much as twitch as she took the knitted blanket off the back of the couch and covered him with it. 

Given the direction her life had taken, she had often been grateful that she had not had children. That did not stop her from occasional bouts of melancholy on the subject, a sad little tug from a life she hadn't chosen, a path she hadn't taken. 

She had felt motherly towards many of the souls who drifted into her path over the years, the girls who spent a few years earning their money on stage, the boys and girls that Frank sent out into the streets and dark alleys and back rooms to push his product. So many of them were so confused, so sad, so very very lost. 

But Sherlock—well. He'd grown special to her. He was the sort of person the world chewed up and spit back out because there was no slot into which he'd neatly fit. She wanted to shield him from bad things, from hurt, from heartbreak. She wanted to keep him. 

No. She wanted to send him as far away from all of this as she possibly could, box him up and ship him off wrapped in labels demanding that he be handled with care. 

Suddenly feeling like she was about to be sick, she'd picked up the phone off of her desk, carried it out of her office into the hall as far as the cord would stretch. She shut the door behind her so as not to disturb Sherlock, and sat down on the floor with her back against the wall. She didn't know where, exactly, he was from, but he'd mentioned Cambridge. Schools had records. They had _contact_ information.

She'd hesitated, just for a moment, wondering what, exactly, he'd fled from in the first place. Could she possibly be damning him further? 

Then she thought of his head, lolling there on the couch, full of syrup-slow thoughts. He'd be dead within the year. She could see it plain as day. There'd be nothing she could do about it, not while he willingly went down that road. And she'd never forgive herself for not taking a risk to try and help him. 

*

In the end, it took three hours. 

It had been some time since she'd made an international call. Her parents had wanted nothing to do with her after she'd run off, and although Margaret had returned home years ago their conversations, whenever they'd made an effort to connect, had been stilted and strange. 

She'd placed the call, been connected, explained and asked and was connected elsewhere. Eventually she found someone who seemed like they might be able to help, asserted an appropriate level of pressure (one could not live the kind of life she had and not learn something about how to get what you want), and was ultimately successful in securing the names of his parents and an emergency contact number. 

She'd hesitated over it for a good long while, looking at the names she'd written down in her own neat hand. She knew nothing of his parents, of his relationship with them. He'd mentioned a brother, in passing. _They might be horrible people, they might be the very thing that he's running from,_ she'd worried.

 _You can always hang up,_ she told herself. _If you get a bad vibe._

She placed the call. She could barely remember what was said. She thought she might have been crying. The woman on the other end of the line had a voice steady as steel but it had cracked, briefly, warm and rich with relief. 

She'd rung off after being told to stay by the phone for further instruction. 

She sat there in the hallway, hip twinging, quietly sniffling into a tissue. Just down the hall, through the big doors, the club was in full swing, the ever-present thump of the bass at once familiar and soothing. _This place,_ she'd thought. _This place has been more home to me than my home for the past many years._

The phone rang. She'd snatched it up. 

"Is he with you?" the voice on the other end was cool, officious. 

"He's asleep," she said. 

"I've made all of the necessary arrangements for transportation," the man said. "Kindly provide me with your location so I can send a car for him." 

She told him, and could hear the incredulity in the silence that followed. 

"My brother is in a—strip club?" 

"In the back office," she'd said. "He works here. He—" _He's a good boy,_ she had tried to say. _He needs help._

"Please see to it that he does not leave," the man's voice had smoothed over again. "The car will be there within the hour, as well as a few trusted associates to facilitate his travel. Can I ask that you remain nearby, should he require assistance in the interim? I would be willing to compensate you for the inconven—" 

"Oh, of course I'll stay with him. You don't have to—you don't have to _pay_ me, for heaven's sake. I just want him to—you'll ensure that he's all right?" 

"I intend to help him. In any way I can." 

"Good," she said, all of her breath leaving her in one big rush. "Good. I'll just—" 

"One hour," the man said, and disconnected the call. 

She got up off of the floor, her muscles protesting shrilly at their treatment. She went back in the office and looked down at him, asleep there under the blanket. His hair was still a sweaty mess against his brow, but he was breathing deeply, steadily, and looked peaceful enough. 

_He trusts me,_ she realized, with a little jolt of guilt. And then she pushed the guilt away with a stubborn shake of her head. _I don't care if he hates me. I don't care if he looks back on this time and curses my name. I'm going to do right by him._

She stood sentry over him for close to fifty minutes, just watching him breathe, reassured by the steady rise and fall of his chest. Eventually, there had been a soft knock at the door. She looked over to see Stevie hesitating there. 

"There's some people here, ma'am. Looking for Sherlock." 

"Yes," she said quietly, stepping away from Sherlock's side and out into the hall. "Yes, you can show them back." 

There were two men and one woman, well-dressed, calm and confident in their movements. They did not introduce themselves and she did not ask their names. They went into her office and she could hear low voices, could hear when Sherlock woke up and began protesting, his voice slow and low and so very confused. 

She'd been afraid they would use force, that they'd hurt him, that she'd have to stand there and watch as he was dragged out of her office and out of her life. Instead he walked out on his own, shoulders slumped, the two suited men flanking him. He'd given her an unreadable look as he'd passed, but said nothing. 

She'd watched as they retreated down the hall. The woman stepped up to her, pulling a checkbook and pen out of one pocket. 

"Are there any debts?" she asked calmly. "Any indiscretions? Anything at all that might…follow him?" 

"No. No, of course not. No." 

"Good. All right. I've been directed to compensate you for any expenses you may have incurred as a result of your association with Mr Holmes," the woman continued. 

She'd turned away with a little disgusted noise, had gone back into her office and shut the door firmly behind her. No one had tried to follow her.

*

"And I thought that was the end of it," she says to John. Her glass is empty, her joint long since smoked down to a tiny nub and discarded amidst the detritus on the coffee table. "And for a long while, a good long while, it was." 

"You got out," John says. He blinks, rubs at his face as if he's just woken up, and gestures at her there on the sofa. "Obviously." 

"I'd been foolish about a great many things," she says. "But smart about one in particular. I had saved a great deal of money from my dancing days. It had been tempting, you know, all of that cash. So easy to let it slip through your fingers. But I'd opened up a little bank account in my maiden name when I first arrived in Florida, and had kept adding to it and adding to it. I don't think he ever even knew it existed." 

John is smiling a bit, and the sight makes a matching one rise to her lips. 

"Even after we were married, Frank was in the habit of giving me a sum of money every week. He was a bit old-fashioned about it, called it my allowance. I squirrelled almost all of it away." She is unable to avoid tittering at that, because it pleases her, still, knowing that she'd got the best of Frank, that she hadn't just had a lucky escape but one of her own devising. "All those years with him, that money sat there, earning interest. Five percent. All of a sudden, I was a woman of means." 

John huffs a little laugh at that, a genuine laugh, and he leans forward in his chair. "Good for you," he says. 

"I took my time," she tells him. "It was almost a full year before I felt ready to make a move. And then he got himself involved in a bad arrangement—and that was _bound_ to happen, eventually—and he wound up shooting two people. In front of witnesses, if you can believe it." She shakes her head, sighs. "Messy business. His arrest was a bit of a media sensation at the time. Apparently, his little cartel had caught the attention of every government agency you can imagine. The FBI approached me, offered to pardon me for any role I may have played in exchange for information." 

"And you went along with it?" John asks. 

"Oh, I sang like a canary," she agrees merrily. "Told them everything. They were a bit shocked, really. I think they were expecting more of a fight." 

"Jesus," John says, and he is shaking his head, smiling his half-smile and looking a little impressed. "No wonder you didn't want him to get out." 

"Oh, he was fit to be tied," she nods. "I don't think I'd ever seen him angrier, really. But there was nothing to be done about it, and as soon as the trial was over and they cleared me to leave the country I caught the first flight back to London."

She stands up, moves to the windows, looks out. "I used most of the money I'd saved up to buy myself this lovely old building, because after so long away I wanted to be as close to the heart of the city as I could get. As if it could erase all of those years in the wrong place, with the wrong people. A bit silly of me, I suppose, but—" 

"No," John says. "No it's—I get it." 

She smiles gently at him. 

"In any case," she says. "I had a good long time to get used to London again before my past chose to rear its ugly head. Apparently, in the United States, the average wait time between sentencing and execution is something like fifteen years. Did you know that? It took sixteen for Frank's date to come up." She moves back to the sofa, settles down, props her slippered feet up on the coffee table. "He'd been busy, in that time. Writing letters, having his lawyer write letters, having his friends write letters. Lots of letters. Petitioning. Doubt was cast on the evidence that had been collected at the time of the murders. I'd been informed there was a very good chance that the governor might grant him clemency." 

"How did—erm—I mean, obviously, Sherlock got involved at some point. How did you—how did you come to find him again?" John asks her, a bit haltingly, and if his voice catches a little on Sherlock's name she doesn't pay it any mind. 

"Always one for surprises, Sherlock," she smiles. "I'd thought about him, through the years, of course. Wondered what became of him." 

"You never looked him up?" 

"No," she hesitates, meets John's eyes. "Honestly, I was too afraid to find out he'd died." 

"Oh," he says, quietly. He leans back in his chair again, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment. 

"As it happened, I was out at the shops one morning. There was a bit of a commotion going on up by the register, some shouting, but I hadn't paid it any mind. I was standing by the butcher's section, trying to decide between chicken and beef, when all of a sudden I heard these thunderous footsteps behind me, and before I could even turn around one of the shop employees had been thrown, I mean truly _thrown_ past me and into the chicken cutlets." 

John opens his eyes, and although he is not smiling anymore he is also not looking so terribly defeated. 

"The man who did the throwing was enormous, John, muscles like that actor from those films, you know the ones—" she waves her hand for a moment, shrugs. "In any case, he looked like he could have stopped a speeding train with one hand. And he pushes past me and goes running off down the bread aisle. And before I could even get over the shock of that, yet _another_ person goes running past, giant coat flapping behind him like some sort of cape." 

John laughs a little, which is good, she'd thrown in that detail about the coat to provoke that reaction. All of that sadness in him makes her heart ache, and god knows it was already aching enough. 

"As I live and breathe, he launched himself into a full tackle, onto this man who was easily twice his size, and the two of them went rolling down the aisle and into a display of tinned soups. It was a sight, John, puddles of split pea and chicken noodle everywhere. It looked like that little girl from _The Exorcist_ had gone on a bit of a drinking binge, only she couldn't quite hold her liquor." 

He chokes out a laugh, seems to surprise himself with it, then laughs again, the sound fuller this time. 

"I was still standing there, utterly dumbstruck, still holding my package of chicken breasts, when he got up off the ground and did his little—" she wiggled a bit, brushing off her sleeves and adjusting the collar of her blouse in an exaggerated motion, "—thing he does, and I realized that I knew him." 

*

"Sherlock!" she'd exclaimed, dropping the package of chicken onto the floor. It made a wet, rude sound when it struck. She remembered that. Funny, the things that the mind holds onto. 

He blinked, turned towards the sound of her voice, and she'd instantly regretted speaking, had just blurted his name out loud without even _considering_ if he might want to see or speak to her after all this time, after what she'd done the last time they'd seen each other. 

Yet still, she could not help the flutter of elation that rushed through her at the sight of him, much older, certainly, but looking so strong and healthy and _well._ He was dressed and groomed impeccably (if one ignored the fact that the back of his head was matted and dripping with thick green soup), and while he still looked like he could benefit from a square meal, there was nothing of that haunted long-ago junkie in his face. 

He'd blinked at her and his eyes had scanned over her, and for a moment she thought he was just going to turn away without saying a word, but instead a little furrow appeared between his brows and he offered up a tentative, hesitant smile. 

She stepped over the chicken on the ground (all the mess around, no one would notice anyway) and rushed forward to fling her arms around him. She could not say, precisely, why the sight of him made her so happy, after all this time, but she did know that she had _adored_ him once, and she'd feared for him somewhere in the recesses of her mind for a good many years, and the sight of him looking so healthy was a balm for her soul. 

He seemed shocked by the hug, and slowly, stiffly raised his arms to pat her on the back. She'd drawn away after a moment, mildly embarrassed. 

"Sorry, forgive an old woman for getting all soppy on you," she'd said. 

He'd frowned, as if finding that to be somewhere outside the upper reaches of his tolerance.

"You've got soup," she'd said, reaching out to tweak the sodden hair at the back of his head. She'd grabbed a roll of paper towels from a nearby shelf and set about trying to clean him up. "Don't fuss," she'd told him as he'd immediately started to turn around. "Else you'll ruin your jacket." 

He stood still, head bowed, and let her wipe at the worst of the mess. For a moment the years blurred, and she was looking at him there on the couch, hair sweaty and matted, eyes unfocused and glazed. The memory was so strong it made her stomach lurch, and she stepped back from him, holding soiled paper towels, suddenly dizzy. 

He'd turned around, flashed a tight smile. "Time's up." 

"What?"

"There!" The shopkeep yelled, pointing towards where she and Sherlock stood in the midst of a mess of scattered cereal and spilled soup, an enormous unconscious man still lying at their feet in the worst of it. Two officers were coming into the shop, heading straight towards him. 

"No time to explain!" he shouted, whirling away.

He'd bolted down the aisle, slipping a little bit in the soup puddles, leading them on a dizzying chase around a frozen food display before reversing direction and sprinting towards the door, reaching it well before his pursuers. And then, one gloved hand on the doorframe, he'd hesitated, looked over his shoulder, and _winked_ at her before disappearing out into the street.


	3. Chapter 3

*

"I've always liked that," she sighs, leaning her head against the back of the couch. "That mischievous little wink he does sometimes. You know the one." 

The room is overwarm and she feels sluggish, drowsy, her tongue tired from talking so much. It must be getting late—she feels as though she's been speaking for hours. She realizes she has done it again, spoken about Sherlock in the present tense, but John hasn't corrected her and she doesn't feel like calling attention to it. Here, surrounded by all of his clutter, he feels _present_ , in a way. There is too much of him here, between these walls, for him to ever be truly dead. 

She thinks of what it will be like, stripping him from the flat, box by box, and the thought so repellant that she shies away from it immediately. Not now. Eventually, of course, but not now. 

There is someone yelling from the pavement outside. The words are muffled and indistinct, but she knows the tone well enough; brash, inebriated. She gives a wary glance towards John, who is still sitting, looking towards Sherlock's chair, his gaze unfocused. He seems beyond caring about the commotion outside, and she is grateful. 

By tomorrow, it should be better. Something else will come up, something new to draw the ire of the masses. Sherlock's name will fade from the public eye until he is little more than a memory, a funny little blip in London's long and storied history. 

By tomorrow. 

But tonight is—well, tonight is a night for remembrance, is it not? She has no idea if her tale is helping John, although he has listened thus far without much objection. The silence, the awful, heavy, all-consuming silence that has permeated these rooms over the past few days has been such a horrible contrast to the lively (annoying) sounds of daily life (explosions, shouting, _gunshots_ ) that it has made the loss that much more tangible. 

The shouting outside has died off. Hopefully the loudest of them have grown tired or bored and wandered off. She supposes it's uncharitable to hope they'd been hit by a cab, but she spares a brief moment indulging the fantasy. She thinks Sherlock would have approved. 

John stirs in the chair, blinking as though awakening from a dream. She watches the awareness bleed back into his face, watches him realize he's been staring in the direction of an empty chair, and the sight of it wrenches her heart in her chest. 

_Oh,_ she thinks, and not for the first time, _it isn't fair._

Sherlock had been barely more than a boy when she'd met him the first time, she'd known him for _such_ a short time, and yet he'd left an indelible impression on her. So much so that she'd spent years, _years_ with him never far from her mind, always worrying after him. To find him again, to reconnect, and then to be there to see him find _John,_ to see that manic energy and brilliance find an audience that was not only appreciative of what he was capable of but of who he _was_ …

It isn't fair. Things should have been getting better for him, not worse. 

"You looked him up?" John asks, and his voice is halting, unsteady. The glass in his hand is empty again, and she is too drowsy to even think about standing to refresh it. "After you saw him?" 

"I did," she confirms. "Looked him up on the internet, found his website. I was so pleased to see how well he'd done for himself! It was the perfect work for him, really, exactly what he needed." 

She remembers it, the rush of pleased surprise upon discovering his website. And it was so unmistakably _him_ , long dry rambling passages going into obsessive detail over the silliest minutia. And she'd thought about emailing him, reaching out, but she'd let it drop. He had a life, now, and didn't need ghosts from a drug-addled past haunting his bright future. It had been enough for her to know that he was alive, that regardless of what happened after he'd been escorted from her sight on that long ago night in Miami, he had _lived._

She hadn't gone looking for him. So she'd been surprised, very surprised, when he'd found _her._

*

She'd kept an American lawyer called Bob on retainer for years, after all of the troubles with Frank. Originally, she had viewed it as precaution, in case the authorities tried to go back on their deal and come after her for the role she'd played in Frank's criminal activities. After several years living unmolested in London, she'd stopped worrying that her fragile peace would be disrupted, but had chosen to keep on paying him anyway. He kept her updated on anything pressing with Frank's case, including any appeal attempts and finally, blessedly, when the execution date had been set.

It had been sixteen years since she'd fled Miami and its sultry heat, since she'd watched as the police boarded up the club that had felt more like home than her actual house. The contents of her office, her sagging, comfortable couch, shipped off to some evidence lockup somewhere, never again to cradle her in its reassuring cushions. 

There had been a bit of sadness in that, in leaving behind everything she'd known. But not much. From the moment she'd set foot in London again, breathed in the cool damp air, felt the thrum of electricity in the city that was so different, so _very_ different from the pulsing lifeblood of Miami, she had felt _right_ again, in a way she hadn't since she was very young. She had come home. No matter how long she'd stayed away, England was her _home._

She belonged here. 

She'd had a series of tenants in the flat upstairs, young professionals mostly, staying for a few years before moving onward and upward in life. She charged them fair rent (very fair, considering the location), because she liked the noise and clamor that came from having people about. She couldn't help but mother them, a bit. Old habits. 

She'd heard the thud of feet on the steps and the slamming of doors and the general bustling signs of life upstairs, and had been contemplating the merits of putting a tray of scones in the oven versus walking next door to Speedy's for a bite to eat (and also, to be completely honest, the rather flattering attentions of Mr Chatterjee) when her phone rang. 

It had been Bob, telling her that yes, Frank's execution was still scheduled as planned, but that he had a strong suspicion that the governor was going to grant clemency. Apparently, he'd told her, there were _doubts._

Her heart had started pounding and her ears buzzing and she'd barely heard anything else he'd said, although he spoke slowly and calmly and reassuringly. She had not quite realized how much she'd _needed_ for Frank's sentence to be carried out. If he remained alive there would always, always be a chance, however small, that he might find his way out of prison and back to her. 

And she had no illusions about how that would go. 

Sixteen years had been plenty of time for her to build a new life. But, in Frank's case, it was plenty of time to nurse a grudge. Little else to do, really, in prison, waiting for your time to run out. 

She'd rung off with Bob feeling flushed and horrorstruck and restless, and had immediately abandoned the idea of baking. Instead she'd fled outside, calmed herself with cool London air on her face, taking in big gulps of air while passerby skirted around her. When she was certain she could walk without toppling over, she'd taken a few determined steps towards Speedy's, only to pull up short. 

Sherlock had been sitting at one of the little tables that Mr Chatterjee set up on the pavement in nice weather. He was sitting there, still and steady, just watching her. He had no coffee or tea or pastry in front of him, just his hands, still gloved, resting on the table. 

"Oh," she'd exclaimed, a bit breathlessly. "You gave me a bit of a fright. I wasn't expecting to see you, dear." 

He tilted his head, and it was _strange_ , so strange, to see that look again, only from an older face, and one much more focused. 

"You've owned this building for some time," he said.

"Sixteen years," she confirmed, stepping forward cautiously and slipping into the seat across from him. 

He nodded slowly, still watching her. "Bad news from Florida?"

She faltered. "I—"

He sighed, leaned forward in his chair. "You stood just over there for eighty-five seconds, eyes closed, either not noticing or not caring that you were disrupting foot traffic. Since it appears that you are neither doddering nor senile, I can only assume that something recently upset you. You draw comfort from fresh air. Specifically, _London_ air. Likely because the climate is quite different from the one in Florida. So you came out here to remind yourself of that, to reassert to yourself that you are, in fact, _here_ and not _there._ Why would you do that? News from the states. Bad news, because I doubt there's any other kind with your particular history." 

She'd laughed a bit, a fond laugh, if still nervous and flustered. "Oh, Sherlock, it's been a long time since I've seen you do that. I'd almost forgotten what it was like." 

He'd looked pleased for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed. 

"I was so happy to see you the other day, dear," she told him. "I've thought about you often, you know. What have you been up to all these years? I saw your website—you've become a detective?"

"Consulting detective," he said. 

She'd hesitated, waited for him to continue. He'd continued studying her from across the table, seemingly disinclined to say anything further. 

She opened her mouth, ready to pepper him with questions about… well… detecting, she supposed, but he blinked and headed her off, speaking rapidly. "Your husband was sentenced to death some time ago, was he not?" 

Startled, she'd nodded, tried to remind herself that this is what he was _like_ , he'd been like this even as a younger man and had only grown more confident and self-assured in the years since. 

"You arrived back in London sixteen years ago. I assume you didn't flee the country—haven't seen your name pop up on any 'most-wanted' lists—and in any case, you've made no effort to conceal your identity. Still going by 'Hudson,' in fact. Not divorced, but you no longer wear a wedding ring and he clearly isn't here with you. Now, I doubt that Frank Hudson would simply stand by while his wife went on a sixteen-year holiday, so he's currently somewhere where he can't follow. So. Prison. Not much of a stretch, given his career choice. He could be dead, I suppose, but, then, what news stateside could have possibly got you so upset? Prison is the likely conclusion. Given the nature of his business, his personal proclivities and the obvious escalation he was involved in when last I saw him, it's very likely that what got him put away was something a _bit_ uglier than his usual fare. A long prison sentence, then. And since you're clearly living well—no one seized your assets, _you cut a deal!—_ and you've made no efforts to hide yourself, a long prison sentence he's not expected to survive." 

He seemed to realize how much he'd said and abruptly closed his mouth, blinking. After a brief hesitation, he added, "Sentenced to death, then. Obviously. So what was the bad news, has he been hanged?"

She burst out laughing. She just couldn't help it, him sitting there like a great nervous bird, blinking expectantly at her. "They don't hang people in Florida, dear, they use lethal injection." 

"Oh," he said, and she could _see_ him filing that information away somewhere in the cluttered corridors of his mind. "Well. My condolences, then." 

He stood stiffly, pulled his coat tighter around himself, turned to walk away. 

"Sherlock," she'd called, still laughing a little bit, because _honestly._ "You think I'd be upset to hear that Frank had been killed?" 

He hesitated, turned back, looking incredibly awkward and incredibly young. "I… was under the impression that people are generally sentimental about their spouses." 

"Oh, I am, in some ways," she'd said, shaking her head. There were tears in the corners of her eyes now, she hadn't laughed that hard or that spontaneously in a long time. She took a deep breath, made an effort to pull herself together a bit. "But I'm not upset because he's been executed, Sherlock, I'm upset because they might _not_ execute him." 

"Oh," he'd said, and then his eyes had lit up. " _Oh!_ "

*

It was a ghastly countdown, the scheduled date for Frank's execution in sight but the possibility of a pardon or commutation of sentence looking more and more likely. His case was being reviewed. Doubt had been cast on the witnesses who had testified against him. 

"It is my sincere belief," Bob told her over the phone. "That the governor will grant clemency in this situation. Enough doubt has been cast on the original testimonies that they won't want to go forward with the execution on humanitarian grounds. Now, I think the chances are good that the sentence will be commuted to life without parole, unless evidence comes to light that proves either his innocence or guilt." 

"Proves his innocence?" she'd asked, flabbergasted. "He's not innocent. He shot two people! In front of multiple witnesses!"

Bob didn't have a good answer for that. 

She'd spent some time considering _life without parole._ It would be much the same as it was now, she supposed. A door that remained open behind her regardless of how much distance she put between herself and it. And that little bit of worry, that ever-present nagging fear that someday it might all catch up to her. 

Because if Frank could turn _guilty_ into _doubt_ , how hard might it be for him to eventually spin that into _innocent_? Might she not, one day in the future, experience the dull horror of the _full pardon_? 

"Likely," Sherlock (never one to mince words), told her once she'd explained the situation. "Clearly your husband has made some influential friends." 

"But what can be done?" 

"Be even more influential," he'd said with a small shrug. Then he'd leapt to his feet. "You should pack." 

She'd leapt to her feet as well, scowling. "Pack? If you think I'm going to let _fear_ drive me out of my home—" 

"I wouldn't dream of it, Mrs Hudson," he waved away her concern. "But you will need to take a short holiday. Pack for warm weather." 

*

"So for the first time in more than sixteen years, I found myself flying to the states," she tells John. "I hadn't missed Florida, you know. The sun is so strong, and the humidity—" she shakes her head, tuts to herself a bit. "Well, thankfully I only needed to be there for a short time." 

"Sher—" John starts, hesitates. "He went with you, then?" 

"He did," she nods, smiles a bit at the memory. He'd been so very _restless_ on the plane. "I was hesitant, at first, you know. He looked like he was doing so well, but—well, you never really know how far someone is removed from all of that unpleasantness, you know? It can be there, just under the surface, and you'd never even see." 

She trails off, smile bleeding from her face. There had been _so much_ that Sherlock had never let them see, all of those thoughts racing through that head of his while he stared placidly outward. 

John makes a sound that is reminiscent of laughter but sharp, harsh, not really like a laugh at all. His lips are pursed in an unhappy line. 

"We landed in Florida on a Tuesday, three days before Frank's scheduled execution date. I took him straightaways to meet Bob, so he might have a look at the files on the conviction." 

"Yeah? How'd that go?" John lets out another one of those sharp laughs, but the line of his jaw has relaxed somewhat. 

"Well," she says. "Bob didn't punch him. Although it was a near thing." 

Another sharp sound, this one closer to real laughter. So much fondness there, buried under that anger. 

"Sherlock proclaimed, _loudly_ , that everyone in the office was—oh, what were his words—so profoundly lacking in intelligence and competence as to make him genuinely fearful for the future of the human race at large.' He then interrupted a meeting to tell the client that she'd be better off trying her hand at self-representation, or, better yet, petitioning the local school district to allow her to hire a ten-year-old out of their mock trial club." 

True laughter now, cut off too soon, but genuine nonetheless. 

"He had a way with words," she smiles sadly, then shakes her head. "We took rooms at a motel on the outskirts of the city. I didn't want to stray too close to any of my old haunts. It had been a long time, but you never know who has a long memory. Sherlock told me to stay put, that he'd need to go out and do a bit of research. I worried, you know, but I did what he said." 

*

To say she worried was a bit of an understatement, she found herself unable to sit down, pacing back and forth across the worn green carpeting. She'd been running the air conditioner, but it was a noisy, inefficient old unit and it clattered and rattled and drowned out the noises from the parking lot outside. She'd felt paranoid, trapped, suddenly certain that her own death could be creeping up on her and she'd never be the wiser. So she'd shut it off, breathed easier in the quiet. But it was _hot_ , and before long she had a fine sheen of perspiration on her skin. 

He was gone all night, and well into the next day. 

She tried to sleep, found herself unable between the heat and the jumpiness that possessed her with every sound from outside. When day broke, she showered, dressed, and resumed pacing anew.

She wondered how she had ever spent so many years in the Florida climate. The very air felt heavy and oppressive. The sunshine was invasive, persistent, demanding. She could feel it pressing against the drawn curtains, struggling to bleed inside, itching to drench the room with hot golden light. 

She'd paced and sweated and fretted, and nearly fell over with relief when she heard, through the wall, finally— _finally!_ —the sound of Sherlock's door slamming shut. She'd gone outside, flinching from the sun like some kind of gothic vampire, and had pounded on the door to his room. 

"Sorry to intrude," she told him. He looked tired, but was impeccably dressed, unruffled. He did not seem to have so much as broken a sweat. "Have you found anything?" 

He'd scowled at her (she didn't take it personally, he seemed always to be scowling), and had moved away from the door to allow her inside. He'd left his air conditioner on while he was out, and his room was blessedly cool. Albeit noisy. She was less worried about someone sneaking up on her with him around, though, since he seemed the type to notice that sort of thing.

"It's coercion or bribery," he told her. "Or a combination thereof. The witnesses to your husband's crime have been discredited, one by one. And—" he hesitated. 

"Oh, go on," she said. 

"There's a woman," he said. "She's come forward, claiming that he was with her that night. That he couldn't possibly have committed those murders." 

"That's absurd," she told him. "He's never mentioned an alibi. Why wouldn't she have come forward at his original trial?" 

"Fear," he said. "Her brother operated a rival 'business', if you will. She's stating that she withheld her testimony out of fear for her life."

"Then why come forward now?"

"In her words? Because God won't let her condemn an innocent man to his death by standing by and doing nothing. Her brother died three years ago, and she's no further fear of recrimination. In reality? She's been well paid. And they've done a good job hiding it, I can't find anything inappropriate in her finances. Possibly an offshore account." 

"How have you accessed her finances?" She grimaced at his suddenly pleased expression. "Never mind, Sherlock, I'd rather not know." 

"Unlikely that she'll be receptive to the suggestion that she change her story." 

"I have a bit of money," she'd offered.

"Judging by the car she drives, not quite enough." He shook his head. "I went to the warehouse where the shooting occurred. It's been turned into a _bowling alley._ " He grimaced. "Unlikely that any evidence would have survived these past years, but it was worth a look. The police do tend to miss everything of importance." 

"So that's—that's it, then? Nothing to be done?" she'd sat down in the rickety little chair by the desk, put her head in her hands. She could sell the Baker Street building, she supposed, take the first offer and hope it brought enough money to buy a new name, a new identity. She could run, and hope that Frank never got any further than life without parole, that she'd never pick up a paper and read that he'd been pardoned. And—if he were to be pardoned (and that was ever more likely, wasn't it, if an alibi suddenly manifested itself?) she would hope that she'd run far enough and long enough that he had no hope of following. 

It was possible, she thought. She was getting up there in years. So was he. She wouldn't have to run for very long. 

"What?" Sherlock asked, then waved his hand dismissively. "No. No! There's still plenty to be done."

"Oh," she said, daring to allow herself a bit of hope. "Well, all right then. What—" 

And she'd lifted her head up, finding herself at eye level with the top of the scratched and battered dresser. Rather, eye-to-eye with what perched _atop_ the dresser. 

"Oh, heavens, _Sherlock_!" she'd shouted, jolting up out of the chair and shying away from the ugly bit of furniture, atop which a bleached human skull grinned out at the room. "What on earth is that dreadful thing?"

"I should think it would be obvious," he said, glancing over from where he'd sat, cross-legged, on the bed. 

"Was that in your suitcase? How did you bring that through customs?" 

He shrugged, utterly unconcerned, busied himself with the laptop. 

"It's a wonder you can sleep, with something like this staring at you all night," she'd groused, reaching out to pick up the skull. 

Sherlock had unfolded up off of the bed with startling speed, snatching it up out of her hand. "It helps to talk things through out loud." 

"I think you're setting yourself up for a bit of a one-sided conversation, dear." 

He'd rolled his eyes. "On the _very rare_ occasion that I get stuck, I find that talking it out to Billy can be helpful." 

"Oh, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the bloody thing has a name." 

"Billy Kincaid," he said, clicking the 'c' sharply. "The Camden Garrotter." 

She'd startled a bit at that, because the Camden Garrotter had been all over the news for months, and a source of considerable unrest for her and a lot of other people in London. She glanced over at—at Billy, grinning sightlessly from the cup of Sherlock's palms. 

"But they never caught the Camden Garrotter, dear," she said, reaching out to pat Sherlock's arm. "That was one of the unsolved ones." 

Sherlock had given her a little sidelong glance. "There haven't been any recent garrottings, have there?" 

"Do you mean to tell me that—that _you_ \--" 

"A very specific and unusual set of circumstances led to Billy winding up in this state. I'll leave you to your deductions." 

"Oh you can't just do that," she'd scolded. "I'll have nightmares." 

He'd rolled his eyes at her, but she thought that underneath all of that he looked a little pleased. "Billy Kincaid was a billionaire philanthropist with a bit of an unfortunate gambling habit. I met him in the course of an investigation a few years back—perhaps you recall the Clarence House Cannibal?" 

She brightened a bit, because _that_ terrible business had been all over the news as well, except he'd been caught. There'd been a trial and everything. 

"I spent a week undercover as a poker player," his lips curled up in a quick flash of a grin. "Someone was killing and eating participants who couldn't pay their debts." 

"I didn't see your name in the news," she said, because it's the sort of thing she would have noticed. 

"I stay out of the news wherever possible, Mrs Hudson." 

She'd beamed at him. "So a garrotter and a cannibal on the same case, then? That's a bit macabre, even for you." 

"The garrotter was incidental," Sherlock had said. And then, because it seemed he couldn't resist playing to an audience, began to elaborate. "The group of gamblers being preyed upon were notoriously close-knit. I had to get to know them, individually, to determine the most likely suspect. Billy proved most helpful—easier to get yourself invited into closed circles if you've a friend inside to vouch for you. A bit of an idiot, of course, but then, who isn't?" 

"So he was your—friend?" She'd glanced sidelong at the skull he was still holding. 

"Billy had grown up an orphan in a series of children's homes. After making is fortune, he wanted to _give back_ , as they say, and pledged a great deal of money to rescue failing hospitals from financial ruin. He had a weakness for high-stakes card games. He, erm, also had a weakness for the occasional garroting. Didn't see it at the time." He'd shrugged, given the skull a little flip in the air before placing it gently back down on the dresser. "I suppose no one's perfect." 

"You didn't turn him in," she said. It wasn't a question. The Camden Garrotter had never been named.

"I was—given the opportunity to make a choice. Weighing the lives his philanthropy had saved against the occasional garroting, it was clear that—" 

"Sherlock." 

"In any case," he said hastily. "It wound up not coming to that. Seems he lost one bad hand too many. Found him in a vat of boiling water when I arrived with Scotland Yard to make the arrest on the cannibal case. Well, what was left of him. The flesh had been boiled clean off his bones. The Clarence House Cannibal liked to keep trophies, you know." 

She glanced pointedly at the skull. 

He shrugged, his lips turning down into an unconscious frown. "Not a trophy, as such. More of a… memento." 

_His friend,_ she'd thought, pity wrenching in her chest. Sherlock had been lonely and odd when she'd known him last, and although he'd done well for himself in the intervening years he was still, at his very core, lonely and odd. 

"Publicly identifying him would have sullied the charitable work he'd done," Sherlock said after a long moment. He sounded hesitant, awkward. She wondered if anyone had ever heard this story from him before, or if she was the first. "Many of the institutions would likely have attempted to give the money back. He was already dead, impractical to let others die out of a misplaced desire for moral high ground." 

"Oh," she'd said, because it made sense in a very Sherlock way. 

"It's—helpful. At times. With cases. To talk things through out loud." He spoke rapidly, as if seeking to restore his previous equilibrium. "Billy had proved useful while he was alive. No reason he couldn't continue fulfilling that purpose." 

"Well, I'm still amazed they let you bring him through customs, dear," she'd sighed. 

He'd quirked that funny little half-smile at her, the kind of smile that seemed to slip out when he'd let his guard down. Then he clapped his hands together. "No time to waste."

"What?" 

"Your husband, Mrs Hudson, surely you haven't forgotten? We are working with a bit of a deadline here." 

She frowned, "I haven't forgotten anything—" 

"Best bet will be finding out who's funding this little campaign, and _why_ ," he said. 

"You just said that there was no way to track who was paying her—" 

"Of course not, whoever's behind it is aware that there will be a certain level of scrutiny. For this little scheme to have any hope of succeeding it must look like it's completely above board."

She shook her head, frustrated. "Then how—" 

"They're being careful _now_ ," he said. "Because they have to be. But people are often careless, Mrs Hudson, particularly when they don't think it matters." He grinned at her, a wide smile, slightly manic. Then he spun around, began rummaging in the wardrobe against the wall. "In this particular case, we won't find any answers in the present. So we must look to the past." 

He turned back, holding up a button down Hawaiian shirt with a garish, loud print. 

In spite of the fear and worry and anxiety that had been simmering just below the surface, she could not help herself. She laughed.

*

"This is a bit exciting," she told him an hour later, sitting in the back of a taxi. Her eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses. She felt a bit like a spy in the movies. 

He didn't acknowledge her, his face impassive, staring out the window. He was studying a row of bars and restaurants, eyeing the foot traffic, cataloguing the clientele. 

"Here," he said to the driver. 

They stepped out into the oppressive heat. The crowds were a bit overwhelming, really, she'd forgotten how _loud_ Miami could be, and how… well, how _naked._ The heat and the sunshine and the proximity to the beach meant that people often saw fit to wander around in bathing suits and little else, and while she remembered that from her time there it all seemed a little more indecent this time around. Had the crowds grown more wanton, or had she simply grown older, so far removed from all of this? 

Sherlock was wearing his Hawaiian shirt and a pair of white shorts, his legs alarmingly pale in a sea of tanned revelers. There was a smudge of sunscreen on his nose, a map of the city tucked into his back pocket. He'd plastered a charmingly baffled smile on his face, and was clearly playing the role of Befuddled Tourist. 

He led the way into one of the many generic bars they'd passed, gesturing for her to take a seat in a booth near the door. The dim cool interior was a welcome reprieve from the heat and sunlight, and she stood in the doorway for a moment, blinking until her eyes adjusted. 

It was a bit of a dive bar, she thought. Not one of the modern, hip places that the young people seemed to be gravitating to these days. This clientele was older, a bit rough around the edges. 

She settled into her seat, noting the cracked vinyl that had been repaired with duct tape. The wood tabletop was scuffed and marred, slightly sticky. She had not thought about the upkeep and maintenance of a bar seating area for some time, but it all came flooding back—the smell of stale beer in the late morning when they opened up, the rough cloths used to wipe down the bars and tabletop, the pungent disinfectant they used on the floors. 

She sat and remembered and watched Sherlock make his way up to the bar. He was still smiling that goofy, befuddled grin, so utterly disarming so long as one failed to notice the sharp gleam in his eye. 

There was a woman behind the bar, she looked to be in her late thirties or possibly forties, hard to say in the dim lighting. Her hair was very blond, almost white, her skin deeply tanned and leathered. She looked like someone who had lived hard. 

"Um, hello there," Sherlock said to her, hesitating and then clumsily taking a seat on a barstool. "First time in the states. Just flew in this morning." 

The bartender was watching him, leaning back with her arms folded. She looked profoundly unimpressed.

He tried the smile again. "Hot out there. What do you recommend?" 

"Look, if you want fancy, go next door," she said finally.

"Oh," he said. "No, I'll just—a pint, perhaps? Erm, beer? Bit crowded next door." 

The bartender relented and procured a green beer bottle, slid it across the wooden surface at him with a wry half-smile.

He looked at it with a confused hesitation that almost seemed genuine, and then picked it up, tipping it towards her in a sort of salute. "Cheers, Amber." 

The smile slid from her face. "Do I know you?" 

"You'd have no reason to," he said, all charm dropped from his voice. He was no longer a confused tourist, he was deadly serious.

Martha leaned forward in her seat, heart pounding. Was this—

"Tell me," Sherlock said. "Approximately when did your monthly stipend dry up?" 

"Who the hell—" 

He held up his hand, "Frank Hudson has diverted money to you on a monthly basis since discovering that you were carrying his child. It's been going on for some time now, your son must be well into his teens. He was generous with his money—he could afford to be. But, well, no offense intended, you don't exactly appear to be living the high life. Your clothes, the state of your hair, the choice of establishment—it all carries the whiff of desperation. Ergo, the money has stopped coming. I want to know where it came from, and when it stopped." 

"You said it yourself," she snarled. "Frank Hudson. He's in prison." 

"I knew Frank Hudson," Sherlock said. "And he never handled his own affairs if he could get someone else to do it for him. I want a name." 

"I don't have to tell you shit." 

"Considering there is a good chance that Frank Hudson will be _departing_ prison very shortly—and by departing, I don't mean in the biblical sense—I believe it's in your best interest to do so." 

She took a stumbling step back from the bar. "Bullshit. They're giving him the needle." 

"Clearly you are unaware of recent developments. There is a very real, very immediate risk that Frank Hudson will be back on the streets, and I'm certain that he will wish to acquaint himself with his son. Perhaps introduce him to the family business." 

"No," Amber said, and shook her head. "My son's in school. He's a good boy. He doesn't know anything about—I don't want that for him. I don't—" 

Martha stood up and stepped forward, tucking her sunglasses into the neck of her shirt.

"Amber," she said gently, coming up next to Sherlock and giving him what she hoped was a clear _shut up_ look. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't important. I just—" 

"Mary Lou?" Amber's shoulders drooped. Her hand went to her mouth. "Oh, I—" and then suddenly she was sobbing. "I'm so sorry. I never—you were always so kind, and I didn't mean—he was just so—" 

"Oh," Martha said, and she slipped around the back of the bar and pulled Amber into a tight hug. She could barely remember her the way she'd been as a young thing, one of the endless parade of naïve, pretty girls who'd found their way into Frank's employ. But it didn't matter. They had all been young once, had all fallen prey to the dubious charms of this life. "Don't you worry yourself about that, it was a long time ago." 

"He used to send money," Amber told her, her voice choked. "There was a man. He set up an account. The fifteenth of every month, it would just be there. It went on for a long time, even after Frank got sent away. And then one day last year, the same guy, he came to me and said they couldn't go on paying. That my son was nearly a man now, and he had to learn to look out for himself." 

That, Martha decided, looking at the knowing expression on Sherlock's face, had to be about when Frank's mystery benefactors began paying off the woman who would become his alibi. 

"Amber," Sherlock said. "Do you have a computer in the back?" 

She nodded, stepping back a little, wiping at her eyes.

"I'm going to need you to log into that account." 

*

"They were all just going to sit back and let it happen," she says, shaking her head. "All of those police and lawyers and politicians. Too hard to put the pieces together. But Sherlock managed it in just two days." 

She stands up again, plucks Billy the skull from the coffee table, returns him to his place of honor on the mantel. She stares at him for a moment, at that eternal, cheery grin. 

"We landed in Florida on a Tuesday," she says to John. "By Wednesday afternoon, he'd found Amber and had the necessary information. The money—the money that Frank put in her account every month, it started coming from a different source once he was arrested. The amount never varied, so she'd never noticed."

"Makes sense," John says, and she is pleased to see that he is still engaged, that he's listening and not just staring at Sherlock's chair with that terrible lost expression. "His assets would have been seized. There wouldn't have been anything in his account to go to her." 

"Exactly," she says brightly. "That's what Sherlock knew immediately. Just as he knew that for someone to step in and keep everything running smoothly, there had to have been a plan. Other money of Frank's, put aside, where the police couldn't touch it. And someone he trusted enough to ensure that it was used correctly."

"So you followed the money," John smiles, shakes his head a little bit. He has always done that, with Sherlock. She thinks he might not even be aware of it, that fond little head shake, the impressed little smile. Looking at Sherlock like he hung the moon, even when he was annoyed with him. Even now, even grieving, even angry and sad—he cannot help but smile a little bit at the evidence of what Sherlock was capable of. It hurts her heart, that Sherlock isn't here to see that anymore.

"We followed the money," she confirms. "And, through some methods of dubious legality—well, you know how he was, dear—Sherlock got the name of the man holding the account. It _was_ funny, though, he had this disguise—" she makes a gesture with her hand, laughs a little, and then let her hand fall to her side. "Well," she says. "You know." 

"Yeah," John says. "I know." 

She shies away from Sherlock's chair and goes back over to the sofa, sits down. 

"It's like anything, really," she says quietly. "Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels. He found the man with the money. He found the proof that they were paying off that girl to provide an alibi for Frank, that they'd been buying off the witnesses, or—in cases where witnesses wouldn't be bought—buying off people to cast doubt on their stories. Doctors, coming forward to talk about dodgy vision, or psychiatrists telling tales about compulsive liars. Imagine!" She shakes her head, huffs. "It was like he'd said, though. They were careful about hiding their money trail, but they were _careless_ about everything else. Once he was on the trail, that was it. It was all over quite quickly." 

*

Bob rang her at the motel on Thursday night. He was laughing. All the years she'd been paying him, calling him for updates, she didn't think she'd ever heard him laugh.

"Your guy," he said. "The one you brought with you from England. I don't know how he did it, but he did it." 

"That's it, then?" she asked. "It's over?"

"To say that the evidence was compelling is an understatement," Bob said. "I can tell you with some certainty that they won't be considering a pardon. The execution should proceed tomorrow as planned." 

She'd placed the phone in the cradle gently, left her hand resting on it for a long moment. When she looked up, Sherlock was lingering in the doorway like a tall, uncomfortable ghost. 

"It should go on tomorrow, as scheduled," she said. Her voice was surprisingly steady. 

"Ah," he'd said, standing awkwardly by the door, all stiffly held long limbs. He held her gaze for a long moment, unblinking. "Would you—like me to go with you?"

"Oh," she'd shaken her head, moved almost to tears. "No, dear. I think I ought to go by myself. But it's terribly sweet of you to offer." She'd gotten up and hugged him then, clasped him tightly, and he'd seemed shocked by the gesture, gone all rigid in her arms, but he allowed it. 

Later, she would look back on that moment and realize that his offer was more likely spurred by a genuine curiosity over witnessing a live execution than out of an attempt to offer comfort. At the time, she'd thought him lonely, reaching out for a human connection in the only way he knew how. 

Well.

Perhaps she had been right about that after all, even if she had misread those specific circumstances. 

"Look me up in a few months, once I've got everything settled," she'd told him at the airport in the morning, fussing over his luggage like an overprotective mother and trying very hard not to think about the fact that in a few hours, she'd be standing in front of Frank again. Hopefully for the last time. "I'll be glad to put this horrible place and all of this horrible sunshine behind me for good." 

He'd nodded at her, accepted her thanks with a slightly confused tilt of the head and a furrowed brow and that strange, unblinking gaze, as though her small kindness was incomprehensible to him. She'd watched him go off into the crowd, strange and alone, so _very_ alone, and thought it likely she'd never see him again. 

She was immeasurably glad that turned out not to be true. 

*

"I was immeasurably glad that turned out not to be true," she says. "That he was able—that you both were able to make a home here. He was a bit of a horror as a tenant, truly, but I can't say I was expecting any different. He was happy, John, you have to know that. He was as happy as he was able to be. I'd never seen him happy until—well—I'm just. I'm glad he was able to be happy for a little while." 

Her voice cracks and she finds she can no longer speak. A sob threatens to shudder its way out of her chest and she brings one hand up to her mouth, presses hard, breathes until she has a little bit of control again. Then she offers John a sad little half-smile. 

He does not see her. There are tears streaming down his face, quiet tears, not accompanied by histrionics or gasping breaths, just a steady rush. He is looking off into space, wearing that pained little grimace that almost looks like a smile. 

"I mourned," she says. "For Frank. It may surprise you to hear that, but—I did. I did love him, once." 

She does not speak of what it was like for her to stand behind the glass, in a room full of strangers, and meet her husband's gaze for the first time in years. To see the flicker of emotions across his face—rage, sadness, acceptance. He'd nodded at her. She'd nodded back. Then she'd sat down, clenched her hands tightly in her lap, and watched him die.

John seems to come back to himself then; he startles, jerks his gaze away from Sherlock's empty chair—and it's awful, that empty chair, it's so truly _awful_ that someone so infuriatingly vibrant should leave behind all of this empty quiet space. 

"I—" John says, and he pauses, takes a deep breath. He clenches his fists. "I don't think I can stay here anymore, Mrs. Hudson." 

It's not what she wants to hear, but she can't really say she's surprised. It's terrible for him to live with all this silence, all of these reminders of everything that's gone. 

Still, the thought of him leaving, of clearing out their rooms, of bringing in _strangers_ , it's— she can't bear it. She no longer wants the kinds of tenants she used to favor, those forever-temporary young professionals who caused no fuss and stayed for a year or two before moving on and moving up; she wants her boys with all of their crimes and chaos and explosions (well, she could live without the explosions, if she's being completely honest) and violin music at inappropriate times and lively mania and _mirth_ , oh, it had always done her heart good to hear Sherlock laugh. And John had always, always been able to make him laugh. 

She won't be hasty. John needs to get away from all of this, she knows. He needs time out from under the weight of it, to wake up and breathe in a place that is not quite so full of Sherlock. The dead cast long shadows, after all. But when he pulls himself together again, when this isn't quite so raw—he'll come back, she thinks. This is his home as much as Sherlock's, it wouldn't be right to have anyone else there. 

He stands up abruptly, moves towards the mantel, hand outstretched as if to touch. But he pauses a few inches shy of the skull, does not quite let his fingers caress bone. Instead he gives a short sharp shake of his head and drops his hand to his side. His fingers flex, curl into fists. 

He turns back to her, nods. "I'm going to—I'm sorry, but I need to—" 

She waves him off, stands alone in the sitting room with its ruined wallpaper and piles of clutter, listens to him moving about in the upstairs bedroom. She can hear drawers opening and closing, the rustle of clothing, the scrape of a zipper—packing, then. He means to leave tonight. 

He comes back through the doorway—faster than she'd expected, but, then, that's the soldier in him—with a duffel bag over his shoulder. 

"I'll come back for the rest," he says. "I just can't. Right now—" 

She hugs him, tries not to be offended when he flinches a little bit. He is hurting, hurting something terrible, and she knows what it's like to suddenly reach a tipping point, to need to get out from the weight of all of that crushing sadness. 

"Take your time," she tells him, pulling back. 

He nods, and he looks so lost that she goes in for another hug, a little laugh-sob hiccupping in her throat. 

"I'll call," he says. "When they put the—when the—when it comes in."

It takes her a moment, but then she knows. The headstone, of course. The ground over Sherlock will be bare until the headstone is finished. That almost sets her off again, the thought of him, alone and anonymous, however temporarily. 

"Yes," she says, patting his arm. "We'll bring flowers." 

He doesn't say goodbye, just turns and goes off down the stairs. He hesitates for just a moment at the door, and then opens it up and goes right out into the night. 

She resists the urge to go to the window, to watch his progress up the street as Sherlock was always doing—the poor besotted fool—he had no idea how many times she'd caught him at it, staring out the window at John's retreating form with that half-bewildered half-lovesick expression. He always played the _saddest_ music on that violin of his after moments like that.

Instead she shakes her head, goes to the mantel. The flat is quiet. So quiet. Billy grins back at her. 

"Don't worry. He'll keep your secrets," she says to him. 

She turns to leave, hesitates, turns back. She regards the skull for a long, quiet moment.

"Oh, all right," she says, resigned, and tucks Billy under her arm. "No sense in the both of us being lonely."

She walks briskly to the door, shuts it behind her. She stands on the landing, cradling Billy, eyes shut. 

For just a moment, she thinks she hears the lonely, plaintive sound of a violin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I've got an oft-neglected [tumblr](http://www.discordantwords.tumblr.com/) that I very occasionally post things to.

**Author's Note:**

> After a lifetime involved in a one-fandom love affair (The X Files), I'm testing out the Sherlock waters for the first time. This work is not beta-ed or Brit-picked. All mistakes are my own. If you notice any particularly glaring errors, please feel free to let me know so I can correct them.


End file.
